Today, On 26th July, A Shiv Sena leader approached the Bombay High Court, requesting an urgent hearing on his pleas challenging Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s decision not to disqualify 14 MLAs from the rival faction led by Uddhav Thackeray. The leader seeks judicial intervention to overturn the Speaker’s order.
Mumbai: Shiv Sena leader Bharatshet Gogavale approached the Bombay High Court, seeking an urgent hearing regarding his petitions that challenge Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar‘s decision to not disqualify 14 MLAs affiliated with the rival faction led by Uddhav Thackeray.
On Thursday, Gogavale pleaded before a division bench consisting of Justices A S Chandurkar and Rajesh Patil, urging an immediate hearing of the petitions he initially filed in January. The bench has scheduled the hearing for August 6.
Gogavale, who serves as the chief whip for Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, filed these petitions on January 12.
He contests the “legality, propriety and correctness” of Speaker Narwekar’s January 10 order, which dismissed his disqualification petitions against the 14 MLAs from the Shiv Sena (UBT) faction. Gogavale seeks a court ruling to declare the Speaker’s order invalid, to quash it, and to disqualify the 14 MLAs in question.
In his petitions, Gogavale argued that on July 3, 2022, he issued a whip instructing all Shiv Sena members to vote in favour of the government during a confidence motion in the Assembly.
He claimed that the 14 MLAs violated this whip and voluntarily renounced their membership in the “Shiv Sena Political Party by their acts and omissions.”
Gogavale also asserted that the Speaker neglected to consider that these members not only relinquished their membership but also conspired with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to destabilize the ruling government by voting against the Shiv Sena.
Read Also: Shiv Sena Leader Shooting: BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad Remanded to Judicial Custody
Additionally, the Speaker previously rejected a plea from the Thackeray faction to disqualify 16 MLAs from the ruling camp, including Eknath Shinde. Gogavale’s petitions argue that since the Speaker’s order recognized Eknath Shinde as the representative of the real Shiv Sena and acknowledged Gogavale as the legally appointed chief whip of the party, he should have disqualified the 14 UBT MLAs for their actions against the party.
According to the petitions, the members of the Sena (UBT) voted against the whip issued by Gogavale, a fact recorded in the Assembly’s proceedings, thereby validating the claim that this was not a mere allegation.