Hyderabad: On 10 January 2024 the Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, Rahul Narwekar, adjudicated on the petition and counter-petition filed by Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde groups of Shiva Sena against each other for disqualification of Members of the Legislative Assembly, who had purportedly either left them or not joined them.
The Speaker did not disqualify the members of either of the groups but instead proceeded to decide which constituted the real Shiv Sena. Narwekar said that he had relied on three major things to reach his conclusion: Shiv Sena's constitution, the party's leadership structure, and its legislative majority.
The Speaker was of the view that no party leadership can use the provision of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India (also known as the anti-defection law) for dissent or indiscipline within the party. He, therefore, found no valid ground to disqualify 16 legislators of the Eknath Shinde faction who went incommunicado. He also rejected the petition for disqualification of 14 legislators of the Uddhav Thackeray group, as the whip was not physically served on them. In coming to this conclusion the Speaker took note of the fact that Sunil Prabhu, who belonged to the Uddhav Thackeray faction had ceased to be the whip from 21 June 2022, when the party split took place, and was replaced by Bharat Gogawale of the Eknath Shinde group.
On 11 May 2023, a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court had ruled that the Governor was wrong in asking the Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, to undergo a floor test and that the Speaker too was wrong in recognising the Eknath Shinde faction apponitee as the party's whip. The court had asked the Speaker to decide on the petitions for disqualification and, among other things, determine prima facie which among the two factions was the real political wing of the party.
The Speaker's verdict drew upon some aspects of the Supreme Court's order and went into details of Shiv Sena's constitution and held that the 1999 document submitted to the Election Commission was the valid one. He rejected the Uddhav Thackeray group's contention that the amended constitution of 2018 should be relied on, because no organisational elections were held in 2013 and 2018.
