Mumbai: Former MNS MLAs Pravin Darekar and Vasant Geete would be joining the ruling BJP on Tuesday, which would further weaken the Raj Thackeray-led party which got routed in the Lok Sabha and Assembly Elections.
MNS drew a blank in the Lok Sabha elections and won only one seat in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly last year as opposed to 13 seats in 2009.
Darekar and Geete, along with two other MNS leaders Akhilesh Chaube and Ramesh Patil, will be formally inducted into BJP in the presence of state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve, BJP sources said.
Recently, over 150 functionaries of the party's Nashik district unit including its chief Sachin Thakre and secretaries Geete and Atul Chandak quit the party posts. Nashik is the only city where MNS controls the municipal corporation.
Former MLA Ram Kadam and Haji Arafat Shaikh, the head of MNS's transport wing, left the party after the Assembly poll debacle. They claimed that there was "a lack of leadership" in the party.
Darekar, once close to Raj Thackeray, resigned from his party post in October, blaming Thackeray's leadership style for the dismal performance in the polls.
