CJI Led Bench Today (July 30th) said it will hear on August 7th a plea of the Uddhav Thackeray faction challenging Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s order declaring the Shiv Sena bloc led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as the “real political party” after its split in June 2022.
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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it will hear a plea from the Uddhav Thackeray faction on August 7, challenging Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar‘s decision to declare the Shiv Sena bloc led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as the “real political party” following the party’s split in June 2022.
The Speaker had also dismissed disqualification petitions from the Thackeray faction against CM Shinde and his supporting MLAs.
The decision to schedule the hearing on August 7 came from a bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud after senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Thackeray faction, raised concerns about the plea being tagged with another case related to the NCP dispute.
“The Shiv Sena matter is listed for hearing on August 6 and it is unnecessarily tagged with the NCP (case on Monday),”
-Sibal said.
The bench, also comprising justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, clarified,
“On Monday, it had said the NCP and the Shiv Sena matter will be heard together one after the another and they were not tagged.”
“We will hear it on August 7,”
-the CJI told Sibal.
On Monday, the same bench had sought responses from Ajit Pawar and his 40 MLAs on a separate plea from the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP, challenging Narwekar’s decision to recognize the group led by the deputy chief minister as the real NCP.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, representing the Sharad Pawar faction, emphasized the urgency of the plea, considering the short remaining tenure of the state Assembly, which expires in November. The bench agreed to hear the NCP plea just after concluding the hearing of a similar petition from the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray camp of the Shiv Sena.
The Thackeray faction has contested the Speaker’s decision favoring Shinde and his MLAs, arguing that they represent the real Shiv Sena. Sibal opposed the alleged tagging of both pleas, arguing that they are separate issues.
On January 22, the Supreme Court had issued notices to the chief minister and other lawmakers of his group based on a plea from Prabhu, a leader of the Uddhav Thackeray faction. The Thackeray faction has accused Shinde of “unconstitutionally usurping power” and leading an “unconstitutional government.”
In an order passed on January 10, Speaker Narwekar had also rejected the Thackeray faction’s plea to disqualify 16 MLAs of the ruling camp, including Shinde. The Thackeray faction has challenged these orders, claiming they are “patently unlawful and perverse” and that they reward defectors by holding that they constitute the real political party.
“All impugned decisions are premised on a common finding that the majority of legislators represented the will of the political party, and therefore, they are not liable for disqualification,”
-the plea stated.
The Speaker did not disqualify any MLA from either faction, which bolstered Shinde’s position as chief minister and increased his influence within the ruling coalition, which also includes the BJP and the NCP (Ajit Pawar group).
Speaker Narwekar asserted that party leadership cannot use the 10th Schedule of the Constitution (anti-defection law) to suppress dissent or indiscipline within the party. He noted that the Shinde group had the support of 37 out of the total 54 Sena MLAs when the party split in June 2022.
The Election Commission had awarded the ‘Shiv Sena’ name and ‘bow and arrow’ symbol to the Shinde-led faction in early 2023. In his ruling on the disqualification petitions filed by both the Shinde-led Sena and the Thackeray faction against each other’s MLAs, Narwekar stated that Sunil Prabhu of the Sena (UBT) ceased to be the whip from June 21, 2022 (when the party split), and legislator Bharat Gogawale of the Shinde group became the authorized whip.
The Speaker also determined that the Shiv Sena ‘pramukh’ (chief) did not have the authority to remove any leader from the party, rejecting the argument that the will of the party chief and the will of the party were synonymous.
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