HC issues notices to Thackeray faction MLAs, Speaker over non-disqualification

 Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday issued notices to Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar and 14 legislators from the Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena. The notices were issued after Bharat Gogwale, who was appointed as the Shiv Sena whip by the Eknath Shinde faction after the vertical split in the party, filed an appeal against the Speaker’s decision not to disqualify the legislators from the Thackeray faction.

A division bench comprising Justices G.S. Kulkarni and Firdosh Phiroze Pooniwalla said in its order, “Issue notices on these petitions to the respondents returnable on February 1, 2024.” The bench has posted the matter for further hearing on February 8.

In his order delivered last week, Mr. Narwekar held after the two rival factions emerged in Shiv Sena, the faction led by Mr. Shinde was the real Shiv Sena and though Mr. Thackeray was the president of the party, his will cannot be considered as the party’s will. Accordingly, Mr. Narwekar also approved Mr. Gogawale’s appointment as the whip on the ground that he was appointed by the Shiv Sena political party and rejected Mr. Thackeray’s decision to appoint Sunil Prabhu as the party’s chief whip.

However, the Speaker also rejected Mr. Gogawale’s petition seeking disqualification petitions against 14 MLAs on the ground that they defied a whip issued by him to vote in favour of the confidence motion of the Shinde government. The Speaker held that Gogawale failed to prove that the notice of the whip was delivered to the MLAs of the Thackeray faction.

Gogawale had on Monday, filed 14 different petitions against the MLAs with the Speaker and the Maharashtra legislature secretariat as the other respondents. He has argued that the Speaker failed to consider that besides giving up membership, the Thackeray faction MLAs also voted against the Shiv Sena government in cahoots with the Congress party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) thereby seeking to topple the ruling government during the trust vote which took place on July 4, 2023 in the legislative assembly.

“It is apparent from the records that the petitioner had sufficiently placed on record evidence to support that the whip was not only electronically delivered to the Respondents herein but a copy of the same was duly delivered by the Petitioner himself via the ‘Pigeon hole’ of the office of the Respondents in the Assembly Office. It is relevant to note that this physical delivery of the whip was done only after seeking due permission received from the Hon'ble Speaker under Rule 19 of Maharashtra Legislative Rule, 1960,” the petitions state.