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Shinde seeks dismissal of Uddhav’s plea in SC
Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday opposed a plea filed by the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) group in the Supreme Court against the assembly speaker’s decision to dismiss disqualification petitions
Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday opposed a plea filed by the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) group in the Supreme Court against the assembly speaker’s decision to dismiss disqualification petitions against Shinde and the legislators who supported him during the rebellion in 2022, and holding the CM’s faction to be the “real Shiv Sena”.
Even as a bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud adjourned the hearing of the Thackeray camp’s plea due to paucity of time, the Shinde faction made it clear that it would seek the dismissal of the petition on the ground of maintainability.
Representing the CM’s faction, senior counsel Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatgi questioned how the Thackeray camp could move the Supreme Court directly against the speaker’s ruling without first approaching the Bombay high court.
“There is already a petition on the speaker’s decision pending before the Bombay high court. It cannot go on in two different courts, especially after bypassing the high court. We are challenging the maintainability of their petition,” the lawyers for the Shinde camp told the bench, which also included justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
Appearing for the Thackeray camp, senior counsel Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi requested the bench to hear the matter at an early date. Sibal said that since the court has on January 22 issued notice on their petition, the other side should be asked to file their counter affidavits.
Responding, Salve and Rohatgi said that they do not wish to file a counter affidavit at this point because they want the dismissal of the plea at the threshold on the ground of maintainability.
At this, the bench said that it would try to assign a date of hearing soon.
On January 22, the bench had issued notices all the 39 MLAs, including Shinde, against whom the disqualification petitions had been filed by the Thackeray camp under the anti-defection law for defying the party whip in the House for the election of the speaker and the floor test in 2022.
The Shiv Sena suffered a vertical split in June 2022 when Shinde and 38 other legislators walked out of the party then led by Thackeray and joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form the government. The rebellion brought down the then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.
On that day, the lawyers for the UBT camp had urged the top court to hear the case, pointing out that the term of the present assembly will perhaps be over by the time the high court would decide their plea. The polls in the state are expected in late 2024.
In the petition filed through Thackeray-loyalist and legislator Sunil Prabhu, the UBT group called assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar’s January 10 order a “colourable” exercise of power based on “extraneous and irrelevant” considerations. It added that such a conclusion was “erroneous” and went against the anti-defection law and the top court’s judgment of May last year directing the speaker not to solely base its decision on the group possessing majority in the House by distinguishing between “legislative party” and “political party”.
“The speaker by relying upon the ‘legislative majority’ to determine ‘who the political party is’ has conflated the concepts of ‘legislature party’ and ‘political party’ which is in direct violation of the law laid down by this court in Subash Desai judgment (in May 2022) that ‘political party’ and ‘legislature party’ cannot be conflated,” said Prabhu’s petition.
The finding that the group which enjoyed 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 10th Schedule, which had been consciously omitted from the Tenth Schedule (anti-defection law), it added.
By its judgment on May 11, a Constitution bench invalidated the Maharashtra governor’s decision asking then CM Thackeray to face a floor test last year and flagged a flurry of errors during the political drama that toppled the MVA government, but refused to put Thackeray back in the saddle because he voluntarily resigned instead of facing the trust vote in the assembly.
At the time, the court left it for Narwekar to decide the disqualification petitions pending against both Shinde and Thackeray groups, rejecting Thackeray camp’s plea that the court should decide the disqualification petitions by itself because of the alleged bias of the BJP leader. By a separate decision on February 17, 2022, the Election Commission ruled that Shinde’s faction will inherit Shiv Sena party’s name and its bow-and-arrow symbol.
Later, Prabhu approached the court again, complaining against the delay by Narwekar in deciding the disqualification petitions against the 39 rebel Sena MLAs, including Shinde.
Hearing Prabhu’s plea on October 13, the bench pulled up Narwekar, commenting that he reduced the adjudication of the disqualification petitions to a “charade”, adding that the speaker could not defeat the orders of the apex court by delaying his decision.
Emphasising that sanctity of the anti-defection law must be maintained, the court had on October 30 directed Narwekar to decide the disqualification petitions by December 31. This deadline was extended by another 10 days by the top court on December 15 following a request from Narwekar.
