Bombay High Court issues notice on plea by Eknath Shinde faction against Maharashtra Speaker's decision on MLA disqualification

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday issued notice on a petition filed by Eknath Shinde faction member Bharat Gogavale challenging the Maharashtra Speaker's dismissal of disqualification petitions filed against fourteen MLAs of the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena [Bharat Gogavale v. Sunil Prabhu & Ors. and connected 13 matters]. .A division bench of Justices GS Kulkarni and Firdosh Pooniwalla sought the response of Speaker Rahul Narwekar and fourteen Thackeray faction MLAs. The case has been posted for further consideration on February 8. .Senior Advocates Ravi Kadam and Anil Singh appeared for the petitioner..Speaker Narwekar had on January 10 dismissed disqualification petitions filed against MLAs of the Shinde faction by the Uddhav Thackeray faction as well as the disqualification petitions filed by the Shinde faction against the Thackeray faction.This has been challenged by Gogavale before High Court..Gogavale has claimed in the petition that the Speaker failed to consider that besides giving up membership, the Thackeray 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, 2022 in the legislative assembly..Meanwhile, the Thackeray faction has also challenged the Speaker's ruling, albeit before the Supreme Court..Pertinently, the Speaker had also rejected the Thackeray faction's disqualification plea against Shinde faction MLAs.The Speaker had ruled that the Shinde faction was the real Shiv Sena when the split emerged within the party in June 2022, thereby allowing the Shinde faction to remain in power in the State with the support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Ajit Pawar faction of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)..The case is rooted in a split within the Shiv Sena party in June 2022. The undivided Shiv Sena headed by Uddhav Thackeray had earlier been in power in Maharashtra in an alliance with Congress and the NCP (known as Maha Vikas Aghadi) before the Shiv Sena split into two. After the split, the Shiv Sena under Eknath Shinde and in alliance with the BJP and the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP came into power. Both factions then sought disqualification of the other faction's MLAs.Cross allegations were made whereby both factions alleged that members of their rival faction had not complied with the order of the party's Chief Whip (persons responsible for organising the party’s contributions to the parliamentary business).The Speaker heard the disqualification petitions after a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ruled in May 2023 that the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly was the appropriate constitutional authority to decide the disqualification petitions within a reasonable period.It thereafter ordered the Speaker to decide on the matter by December 31, 2023, after allegations were made before the top court that the Speaker had been delaying the proceedings..Gogavale was represented by Senior advocates Ravi kadam, Anil Singh, Pradeep Sancheti, Anil Sakhre, Nikhil Sakhardande along with advocates Chirag J Shah, Utsav Trivedi, Ekta Dalvi, Arpit Gupta, Vishal Acharya, Himanshu Sachdeva, Manini Roy, Piyush Tiwari and Shyam Jadhav.