The Supreme Court on Monday extended by 15 days the January 31 deadline set by it earlier for the Maharashtra assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar to decide on a bunch of disqualification petitions linked to the split in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that had added a new party, and deputy chief minister, to the ruling coalition in Maharashtra last year.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, granted more time to Narwekar for delivering the verdict in the matter after recording his statement that the hearing process will conclude on January 31 and that the additional time was being requested only to prepare the judgment.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the speaker, pointed out that Narwekar has remained predominantly occupied with the disqualification proceedings linked to the vertical split in the Shiv Sena, which was decided earlier this month.
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“The cross-examination of evidence will be over on January 30 and the final hearing will also conclude on January 31. We are asking for three weeks to dictate judgments. This is a realistic time we are asking for,” Mehta submitted before the bench, which also included justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
Opposing the extension by three weeks, senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing Sharad Pawar loyalist Jayant Patil, said that an additional time of one week should be enough for Narwekar to write the judgment.
{{/usCountry}}Opposing the extension by three weeks, senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing Sharad Pawar loyalist Jayant Patil, said that an additional time of one week should be enough for Narwekar to write the judgment.
{{/usCountry}}At this, the bench said that it would grant the speaker time till February 15 to deliver his verdict in the batch of disqualification petitions filed by the Sharad Pawar camp against 40 MLAs and 5 MLCs for anti-party activities after Ajit Pawar split the party and joined the coalition government in the state as deputy chief minister.
Following a split in Shiv Sena in May 2022 that brought down the then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government and saw Eknath Shinde taking over as the new chief minister of the state, NCP suffered a similar fate in July 2023, prompting NCP MLA Patil to move the top court, seeking a directive to Narwekar for a time-bound disposal of the disqualification petitions filed against Ajit Pawar and the MLAs backing him.
Patil’s petition was filed in September, lamenting that Narwekar had been sitting over the disqualification petitions for the last three months.
The Sharad Pawar camp filed three petitions for disqualification of rebel MLAs.
The first petition was filed against nine MLAs, including Ajit Pawar; the second petition was against 20 MLAs; and the third against 11 MLAs.
The Ajit Pawar camp has also filed disqualification petitions against ten NCP MLAs and three MLCs. It has also filed a petition before the Election Commission of India (ECI), seeking permission to use the party’s name and election symbol. The verdict in the case is expected to come soon.
Emphasising that sanctity of the anti-defection law must be maintained, the apex court had on October 30 set down deadlines on the two politically sensitive cases -- the Sena split and the NCP fissures – entailing that the issue will be decided well in time for the general elections next summer, and state polls expected in October 2024.
“Procedural wranglings between contesting parties cannot delay the disposal of these petitions... These proceedings cannot linger on until elections are announced, and the petitions are rendered infructuous. That seems to be the idea,” the bench had said on October 30 while fixing the deadlines for the speaker.
Narwekar was directed to decide the disqualification petitions linked to the Sena split by December 31 and those connected to the split in NCP by January 31.
Following an extension of the deadline till January 10, Narwekar dismissed the disqualification petitions filed by the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) group against Shinde and the MLAs that supported him during the rebellion in 2022 and holding the chief minister’s faction to be the “real Shiv Sena”.
The UBT group later challenged the speaker’s decision before the Supreme Court, which issued notice on the petition last week and sought responses from Shinde and 38 other Shiv Sena legislators of his camp.