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SC issues notice to Eknath Shinde, MLAs over Thackeray groups' plea challenging Speaker's verdict
The Supreme Court will hear the matter after two weeks.
The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice on a petition filed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction challenging the Maharashtra Speaker’s order holding the Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena.
The top court will hear the matter after two weeks.
Both factions of the Shiv Sena have legally challenged the Maharashtra assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar’s recent verdict in a batch of petitions seeking the disqualification of rival camp’s legislators under the anti-defection law.
While the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction moved the Supreme Court against Narwekar declaring as the “real political party” the bloc headed by chief minister Eknath Shinde, the latter challenged the speaker’s decision to not disqualify 14 Shiv Sena (UBT) legislators before the Bombay high court.
On January 10, Narwekar ruled that Eknath Shinde’s party was the real Shiv Sena and turned down demands to disqualify either faction’s lawmakers, marking a significant victory for the ruling coalition in the fractious battle for control of the regional outfit.
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In its filed by through its chief whip Sunil Prabhu in the apex court, the faction led by Thackeray has described the speaker’s January 10 verdict as a “colourable” exercise of power based on “extraneous and irrelevant” considerations.
On the other hand, Bharat Gogavale, the chief whip of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, filed petitions in the high court on January 12, challenging the “legality, propriety and correctness” of the verdict and sought the court to declare the ruling as “bad in law”, quash it and disqualify all 14 MLAs of the Shiv Sena (UBT) from the state assembly.
“The finding that the group which enjoyed the support of a majority of legislators represented the political party effectively amounts to bringing back the concept of ‘split’ under the erstwhile para 3 of the Tenth Schedule [of the Constitution], which had been consciously omitted from the Tenth Schedule,” the petition filed by the Thackeray faction said.
