The Supreme Court on Thursday questioned the Speaker’s decision related to Uddhav Thackeray group’s plea seeking disqualification of MLAs, including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde from the office of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar.
A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra sent the original documents after the Shinde faction alleged forgery in the records by the Thackeray camp. The CJI also asked, “Isn’t the speaker’s decision to decide the issue solely on legislative majority contrary to our judgement?”
The apex court, which had issued notice on the Thackeray group’s petition, asked Shinde and his MLAs to file a response positively on or before April 1 and listed the plea for final hearing on April 8.
The bench said it was keeping the issue of maintainability of the petition open.
On January 10, the speaker had declared the Shiv Sena bloc led by Shinde as the ‘real political party’, following its split in June 2022. Narwekar had also rejected the Thackeray faction’s plea to disqualify 16 MLAs of the ruling camp, including Shinde.
The top court had sought responses on January 22 from the chief minister and other lawmakers of his group on the plea. The Thackeray faction, in its petition filed through MLA Sunil Prabhu, has alleged that Shinde “unconstitutionally usurped power” and is heading an ”unconstitutional government”.
The Shinde group had the support of 37 out of the total 54 Sena MLAs when the party split in June 2022, the speaker had noted.
The Election Commission had given the ‘Shiv Sena’ name and ‘bow and arrow’ symbol to the Shinde faction in early 2023.
(with PTI inputs)
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