Sena vs Sena row: Shinde faction real Shiv Sena, not Uddhav faction

The Assembly Speaker of Maharashtra Rahul Narvekar delivered a devastating blow to the Uddhav faction on Wednesday by declaring that the Eknath Shinde faction is the true Shiv Sena.

As per further information, Speaker Rahul Narwekar declared that Uddhav Thackeray has no power to remove Eknath Shinde from his position as leader of the Shiv Sena party. The Speaker stated that identifying the party’s leadership structure could be done by looking up the lengthy verdict in the party’s constitution. In turn, the leadership structure helps determine which faction of the Shiv Sena was the real party.

The NCP-Sharad Pawar faction’s Jitendra Awhad expressed shock at the ruling, claiming that although the Assembly Speaker position is the highest, Rahul Narvekar has diminished its honor.

After the Speaker met with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde ahead of today’s verdict and stated that the match would be fixed, the Uddhav faction already filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.

MLA Aaditya Thackeray said that the first thing that caught the attention was the Speaker’s meeting with the Chief Minister prior to the decision. 

Pune based Adv Satya Muley gave his analysis about the verdict given today.

He said, “It was very clear judgment. The Chairman appears to have considered all the key issues. Although the judgment appears to have gone against the Uddhav Thackray faction, the judgment states that the leadership structure of the UBT faction was not in conformity with the Constitution of the political party.”

He further said, “On the other side it was also held that the will of the post of the paksha pramukh is not synonymous with the will of the political party. The Constitution of Shiv Sena states that Rashtriya Karyakarini has the power to decide on the affairs, and therefore the decision of Mr. Uddhav Thackrey to expel Mr. Eknath Shinde is not valid, as the Paksha Pramukh does not hold the power to do so.”

Further it was noticed that the constitution of Shiv Sena does not have any provision for dispute resolution. Documents submitted by the UBT faction even lacks signatures therefore such documents were not placed reliance upon by the Chairman. Due to the above said issues, it was imperative to rely upon the legislative majority. Mr. Eknath Shinde faction had support of 37 out of 55 elected members of the Shiv Sena political party. Therefore Mr. Eknath Shinde faction has been held as the real Shiv Sena. Consequently the whip issued by Mr. Bharat Gogawale of Mr. Eknath Shinde faction is considered to be the valid whip and not that of the UBT faction.

Disqualification: It was held that the grounds brought forward by both the factions were not substantiated by supporting evidences, and were based on mere allegations and news paper reports. The allegation that Mr. Eknath Shinde faction was incommunicado could not also stand as no evidence was brought on record by UBT faction about communication attempts. Therefore no MLA’s were disqualified from either faction.

It is a land mark judgment with clear observations. It appears that an appeal to the Supreme Court may be rendered infructuous as the term of the current MLA’s is nearing to an end.