The much-awaited order on the Shiv Sena MLA disqualification plea was finally pronounced by the Speaker of the Maharashtra assembly on Wednesday. Speaker Rahul Narwekar gave relief to both factions by dismissing pleas of disqualification filed against each other. While pronouncing the order, Narwekar said that the Whip of Shiv Sena (UBT) Sunil Prabhu and Shiv Sena counterpart Bharat Gogawale couldn’t produce any concrete evidence that the notice of the ‘whip’ issued by them was delivered to the 16 MLAs of the Eknath Shinde camp and 14 of the Uddhav Thackeray faction.
“Sunil Prabhu claimed that he had sent a notice of whip to 16 MLAs via WhatsApp but couldn’t produce the relevant evidence. Thus MLAs who didn’t not attend the meeting are not liable for disqualification,” said Rahul Narwekar, similarly while pronouncing the order on the disqualification plea filed by Eknath Shinde’s faction.
Narwekar said, “Bharat Gogawale who was appointed as chief whip of Shiv Sena couldn’t produce any evidence that a notice of whip to vote in favour of the candidate of Speaker’s election was delivered to 14 MLAs supporting Uddhav Thackeray. During the cross-examination discrepancies were found in his answers related to the same, hence 14 MLAs of UBT are not liable for disqualification for not following the whip,” said Narwekar.
Today, Speaker Narwekar recognised Shinde’s Shiv Sena as the real Shiv Sena and also snapped Thackeray by saying that he has no right to remove anyone from the party as per the party’s leadership structure mentioned in the party’s constitution submitted in 1999, which the Election Commission of India also recognised and had shared the copy with the office of the Assembly Speaker.
Narwekar also mentioned that he has rejected the amendment done in the party’s constitution in 2018, as the copy with the Election Commission has no signatures of Uddhav Thackeray, and the leadership structure mentioned in 2018 is not as per the constitution copy which is available with ECI.
The Speaker also rejected the claim of the Thackeray group that only the party chief has the right to take a final call. Narwekar said that as per the valid and available constitution of 1999, the national executive is the only authority that can make final decisions including the removal of any officer bearer or a group leader from their post and the party.
Narwekar gave a jolt to the Uddhav Thackeray faction by recognising Bharat Gogawale as the Whip of the party. He gave an exact contrary order against the last order of the Supreme Court which had recognised Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sunil Prabhu as Whips and rejected the Shinde faction claim of Bharat Gogawale being chief Whip of the party.
“The 10th Schedule is not intended to be used as a device to be used for imposing intra-party discipline. Much less for administering the party. No party leadership can use the provisions of the 10th schedule as a deterrent to stifle the collective dissent of a larger number of members by threatening them with disqualification under the 10th schedule,” said Narwekar while pronouncing the order.
Though none of Uddhav Thackeray’s MLAs have been disqualified but challenges in front of him are big. After losing the party symbol and party name, on Wednesday Speaker Narwekar recognised Shinde’s faction as the Shiv Sena political party. Sources say Uddhav Thackeray is all set to approach the Supreme Court against this order.
“Today Narwekar’s order showed how one can disobey the order of the Supreme Court. If our constitution is not valid why didn’t he disqualify our MLAs? We are already fighting the legal battle against the ECI’s decision of recognising another camp as Shiv Sena, and the Speaker today took the base of that order and gave an order in their favour,” said Uddhav Thackeray. “Narwekar has not followed the orders of the Supreme Court, which had already recognised our ‘Whip’ and asked him to give an order by conducting a hearing but he went off track and also gave an order about ‘political party’. I request the Supreme Court to take suo moto action against Narwekar. Everyone knows Shiv Sena belongs to us and not Shinde.”
Narwekar had broken the framework given by the Supreme Court, said Thackeray, reiterating that it was a “fixed match”. He also requested the Supreme Court to resolve the matter before the Lok Sabha election as he believes the strategy of the rival side is to drag this issue till then.
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