Supreme Court To Hear Shiv Sena (UBT) & Sharad Pawar -NCP Pleas Against Maharashtra Speaker's Decisions On August 7

The Supreme Court has scheduled the hearing of the election disqualification petition filed by the Shiv Sena- UBT(Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction against the MLAs of the faction led by Eknath Shinde for August 7. 

The Special Leave Petition under Article 136 has been filed by UBT member Sunil Prabhu challenging the order dated 10.01.2024 passed by the Speaker, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, dismissing the disqualification petitions filed by the Uddhav Thackeray group against the MLAs of the Shinde group.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, for Sunil Prabhu, mentioned the petition today before Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, seeking clarity on listing of the matter. It may be recalled that yesterday, the Court tagged the petition by the National Congress Party(NCP-Sharad Pawar) challenging the speaker's refusal to disqualify Ajit Pawar's NCP faction with the pending Shiv Sena UBT's challenge. 

Pointing out the procedural order, Sibal submitted that since the NCP matter has been listed for September, the clubbing of the cases would cause a delay in hearing of the present UBT challenge, which was previously fixed for August 6.

The CJI clarified that the NCP matter was tagged with the Shiv Sena one. The Court agreed to Sibal's request that the matters be taken up on August 7.

Thus, both the NCP and Shiv Sena matters will be taken on August 7.

On the last hearing, the CJI had said that the bench would first hear the respondents on the issue of maintainability.

It may be noted that the Shinde Faction has already approached the Bombay High Court at a previous instance, challenging the same order of the Maharashtra Speaker to the extent he refused to disqualify Uddhav group MLAs.

Speaker Rahul Narwekar dismissed the set of disqualification petitions filed by both the Shinde and Thackeray groups against each other. The Speaker held that the Shinde group was the 'real' Shiv Sena on the ground that they had a legislative majority (majority of MLAs) when the rival factions emerged in June 2022. The Speaker also recognized the whip appointed by Shinde as the official whip of the Shiv Sena party and held that there was no violation of the whip by the Shinde group MLAs.

Uddhav Sena challenges that the Speaker's ruling violates the judgment of the Supreme Court in Subhash Desai v. Governor of Maharashtra, by conflating the concept of 'legislature party' with the 'political party”.

Case : Sunil Prabhu v. Eknath Shinde SLP(C) No. 1644-1662/2024