The Maharashtra Assembly Speaker, Rahul Narwekar, has stated that the decision on whether the Chief Minister and 15 MLAs will be disqualified or not ultimately boils down to which faction of Shiv Sena represents the political party. Narwekar’s statement follows a Supreme Court ruling that said it could not disqualify Mr. Eknath Shinde and 15 other MLAs who revolted against then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in June last year.
The court stated that the decision to disqualify would rest with the Speaker until a larger panel of judges decides on it. The court also made it clear that Narwekar had erred in recognizing the whip and tasked him with deciding on the disqualification of the 16 rebel MLAs.
The Speaker disagreed with the Thackeray faction’s argument that his failure to recognize the whip now had to be rectified and the rebel MLAs disqualified. He stated that if it were that simple, the court would not have asked him to get into the issue of who was in charge of the political party.
In July last year, Narwekar appointed Bharat Gogawale of the Eknath Shinde faction as the whip, removing Sunil Prabhu, who belonged to the Thackeray faction. However, Gogawale’s appointment as the whip has been held badly in law because he was appointed by the legislature party.
Narwekar said he would decide on disqualification as soon as possible, but “won’t hurry to deny justice and will look at facts” of June and July 2022. He added that he would not allow any miscarriage of justice.
However, all of Narwekar’s decisions can be called into question once the seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court takes a call on the 2016 Nabam Rebia judgment. The judgment deals with the powers of assembly speakers to decide on disqualification pleas.
The court’s judgment had helped the faction led by Shinde, allowing the rebel MLAs to remain in the assembly. Narwekar indicated that the decision on whether the Chief Minister and 15 MLAs will be disqualified or not would ultimately depend on which faction of Shiv Sena represents the political party. He stated that the Supreme Court had not said which faction comprises the political party and that he was yet to decide on this.
