Uddhav Thackeray Moves Supreme Court Over Maharashtra Speaker's 'Real Shiv Sena' Order

Former Maharashtra chief minister and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday (15 January) moved the Supreme Court to challenged state Assembly Speaker's 'real Shiv Sena' order.

This comes as Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narvekar had earlier last week ruled in in favour of the Shiv Sena faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Narwekar recognised Shinde's faction as the 'real Shiv Sena' , basing his decision on the 1999 version of the undivided party's Constitution, which did not give Uddhav Thackeray the authority to expel Shinde, meaning he remains a Shiv Sena member, NDTV reported.

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Thackeray has also challenged the Speaker's decision to reject petitions to disqualify MLAs, who in June last year, quit the (then) undivided Shiv Sena to join Shinde's breakaway faction.

Earlier, Narwekar defended his decision to not disqualify the members of the Uddhav Thackeray's group.

He clarified that although Bharat Gogawale was properly named as the party whip, there was ambiguity over whether the directive to attend the party meeting was "adequately and properly served" to the Thackeray faction's MLAs.

"It appears that this service is not complete. There was no evidence to show this whip was properly served upon the MLAs belonging to the Thackeray faction. Since this filter was not cleared, it was not appropriate for me, under the principles of natural justice, to hold them disqualified," Narwekar told NDTV in an interview.

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