Mumbai: The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) on Monday moved Supreme Court against Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s order rejecting plea to disqualify MLAs of the Eknath Shinde group, PTI reported.
The Speaker on Wednesday had legitimised the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena as the real party.
Thackeray has also contested the Speaker’s ruling that dismissed petitions seeking the disqualification of legislators who, back in June, left the Shiv Sena (which was undivided at the time) to join Mr. Shinde’s splinter group.
The main fulcrum around which the judgment of the Maharashtra legislative assembly speaker revolves is that the Constitution of the Shiv Sena is provided by the Election Commission of India and not the original one of the party. Based on this, Narwekar held that Uddhav Thackeray did not have the authority to remove Eknath Shinde from the party.
The Speaker said the Shinde faction had an overwhelming majority of 37 of 55 MLAs when rival factions emerged and that Shinde was validly appointed as the leader of the legislature party. Both factions had filed 34 cross-petitions against each other seeking the disqualification of 54 MLAs, with the Shinde faction claiming 67 per cent of the Shiv Sena MLAs in the assembly and 75 per cent of the party’s MPs in the Lok Sabha. However, Narwekar refused to disqualify any MLA from both the factions.
