Another jolt to Uddhav as SC refuses to stay EC order
In a setback to Uddhav Thackeray, the Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the Election Commission of India’s order that had recognized the Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena and granted the bow and arrow symbol for their party. A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala, however, granted liberty to the Uddhav Thackeray faction to use the name ‘Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)‘ and the ‘flaming torch‘ symbol for the by-elections in Chinchwad and Kasba Peth.
“The ECI order is confined to a symbol. Now we cannot pass an order to stay the Election Commission order. We are entertaining the SLP. We cannot stay the ECI order today,” the Court said. The Court then proceeded to issue a notice in the matter and listed the case after two weeks.
“Issue notice. Pending further orders protection granted under Para 133(4) (allowing the Thackeray faction to use the flaming torch symbol) under the impugned order of the Election Commission shall continue to operate. List this after 2 weeks,” the order said.
The Court’s order came on a plea by the Uddhav Thackeray faction against a February 17 Election Commission of India (ECI) order recognizing the Eknath Shinde-led faction of the split party as the real Shiv Sena and granting them rights to use the party’s bow and arrow symbol. The ECI relied on the strength of the legislative wing of the party to arrive at its decision rather than on the test of its organizational wing.
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the Thackeray-led faction, questioned the ECI’s decision to apply the “test of the legislative wing” in determining which faction was the real Shiv Sena. “Milord, the basis of the ECI order is that in the test of majority, the organizational wing will not be taken and instead take the test of majority in the legislative wing… That’s how the symbol was given to them… What will the High Court do?”, he argued.
Senior Advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for the Shinde faction, questioned the maintainability of the plea. He said that the Thackeray faction should have approached the courts below instead of directly coming to the Supreme Court against an order of the ECI. “To come to the Supreme Court directly, your lordships have time and again said, that there is a judicial hierarchy…” he said. Senior Advocates Mahesh Jethmalani and Maninder Singh also appeared for the Shinde-led faction.
A separate batch of petitions is also pending before the top court in relation to the Shiv Sena crisis. The apex court, in that case, is considering various legal questions including the powers of the Governor of a State, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, and the Speaker’s role when it comes to the initiation of disqualification proceedings against MLAs.
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The top Legal Eagles have had field days in raising issues, beyond the basic majority aspects. When 40+ out of 56 and 12+ out of 18 are on one side, can anyone dispute the majority view, unless these are bonded laborers or slaves.
Inheriting is easy, working for it, is very difficult. He has no experience nor ideology charisma of his father