Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde (Right) being greeted by Shiv Sainik after the Speaker's verdict on Shiv Sena.
New Delhi/Mumbai: In a setback to the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray, Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar declared the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction as “real” Shiv Sena and refused to disqualify MLAs of the Shinde camp on January 10, 2024. Narvekar also rejected the disqualification of the MLAs of the Uddhav camp.
Narvekar based his verdict on the 1999 party constitution of the Shiv Sena submitted to the Election Commission and termed it as the ‘valid constitution’ for deciding the issues. He, in his 105-minute long speech, said the Uddhav Thackeray faction’s contention that the amended constitution of 2018 should be relied on was not acceptable. The Speaker also considered the fact that the Shinde faction had an overwhelming majority of 37 out of 55 MLAs when the rival factions emerged on June 21, 2022.
After the Speaker’s ruling, the Uddhav Thackeray faction today filed a fresh affidavit in the Supreme Court objecting to a meeting between Narvekar and Shinde at the latter’s residence on January 7 – three days before the ruling came.
“It is highly improper for the Speaker to meet Eknath Shinde…” the affidavit said, adding that this raises questions about his fairness.
Uddhav has called the verdict “an insult of the Supreme Court order” and a “murder of democracy”.
Following the verdict of the Speaker, Chief Minister Shinde congratulated the “Shiv Sainiks” and posted in Marathi on X today that loosely translated meant that this was a victory of Indian Constitution and democracy and also of Shiv Sainiks and lakhs of voters in the state who voted for Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance candidates in 2019.
It may be mentioned that the Shiv Sena was split between the two factions in June 2022, each claiming to be the original Shiv Sena.
(The Supreme Court has held that the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly should decide on a petition seeking disqualification of a member under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution within three months, in the absence of exceptional reasons).
Following the split and Shinde replacing Uddhav as Chief Minister with the support of the BJP, Uddhav had filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking disqualification of Shinde and his group’s legislators under the anti-defection law. Shinde claimed he had not defected but rather represented the true Shiv Sena party. While the case was still being heard by the Supreme Court, Shinde filed a petition with the Election Commission of India and got a favourable ruling concerning his claim to the ‘Shiv Sena’ name and the Bow and Arrow symbol. Uddhav appealed against the ECI decision, and the case was pending in the Supreme Court.
– global bihari bureau
