Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Sunday left for New Delhi to meet with Solicitor General Tushar Mehta ahead of the Supreme Court’s scheduled hearing on October 30 of the plea filed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) faction, which has been urging the Speaker to expedite disqualification proceedings against legislators of the ruling Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena group.
Speaking to reporters at the Mumbai airport while leaving for the national capital, Mr. Narwekar said his Delhi visit was a pre-scheduled one.
“There are a couple of meetings scheduled in Delhi, including one with the Solicitor General…I will take legal advice [on the Shiv Sena hearing] and then decide over it,” he said.
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Responding to a query on notices sent to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLAs of both camps (led by Sharad Pawar and rebel leader Ajit Pawar, respectively) over disqualification petitions, the Speaker said: “It is part of the procedure. I issued the notices after scrutiny of the submitted disqualification petitions was over.”
The Supreme Court is slated to hear pleas filed by both the Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP group, both allies in the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance, on Monday.
The Supreme Court on October 17, while pulling up the Speaker, had granted Mr. Narwekar a final opportunity to give a realistic time-frame to adjudicate on the cross-petitions that have been filed by rival factions of the Shiv Sena. The petitions seek the disqualification of legislators belonging to the respective opposing camps. This follows the intra-party split in June 2022, which led to the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray’s MVA government, and of rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde becoming the new CM.
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The Supreme Court had rebuked Mr. Narwekar for delaying the adjudication in September as well. The court had directed the Speaker to announce within a week the date for the ruling on the disqualification petitions filed by the Sena factions. The SC had observed that nothing had been done thus far despite its direction to the Maharashtra Speaker to decide the pleas within a reasonable time.
On May 11, the Supreme Court had ruled that Mr. Shinde will continue to be the Chief Minister of Maharashtra while stating it could not reinstate the MVA coalition government headed by Mr. Thackeray as the latter chose to resign without facing a floor test in the wake of Mr. Shinde’s rebellion.
However, the SC judgment had questioned the then Governor B.S. Koshyari’s action of calling for a floor test in order to solve an intra-party dispute. It also held that the appointment of Bharat Gogawale (of the Shinde faction) as the whip of the Sena was illegal.
In July, Mr. Narwekar had issued notices to 40 MLAs of the Shinde-led Sena and 14 legislators of the Thackeray faction, seeking their replies on disqualification petitions filed against them.
It was only on September 14 that the first hearing on the disqualification petitions finally got under way.
