The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to list on October 13 a petition filed by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar’s loyalist, Jayant Patil, to intervene with Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar to hear disqualification proceedings against party legislators who have changed fealty to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said the case would be listed on October 13 along with Uddhav Thackeray camp’s plea that Mr. Narwekar was sitting on disqualification proceedings against Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his breakaway loyalists whose actions had led to a split in the Shiv Sena party.
On September 18, the top court had given the Speaker a week’s time to prepare a time schedule to open the pending disqualification proceedings against Mr. Shinde and other MLAs in his faction accused of defection.
“We will hear this matter [Jayant Patil case] along with the [Shiv Sena case]...We had asked the Speaker in the latter case to fix a timeline,” Chief Justice Chandrachud addressed senior advocates Kapil Sibal and A.M. Singhvi, appearing for Mr. Patil.
Mr. Sibal said the disqualification petitions were filed on July 2 and nothing had been done till October.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, intervening, said the two cases should not be listed together as they were “entirely different on facts”.
“We will hear it on Friday [September 13],” Chief Justice Chandrachud said.
The Sharad Pawar camp had filed disqualification petitions against 40 MLAs for anti-party activities following Mr. Ajit Pawar’s split from the NCP to join the coalition government under Mr. Shinde to share Deputy Chief Ministership with BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis.
The court had put the Speaker on a week’s deadline in the Thackeray versus Shinde case after noting that he had not budged on the disqualification proceedings despite a Constitution Bench judgment on May 11.
The court had, in the judgment, expected the Maharashtra Speaker to show “deference and dignity” to the court’s direction that he should decide the disqualification petitions within a “reasonable time”.
“The order of the Supreme Court requires the Speaker to decide the disqualification petitions within a reasonable period. While this court is cognisant of a need to ensure a sense of comity between the Speaker, who is the head of the Legislature Assembly, we would equally expect deference and dignity to be shown to the direction which have been issued by the Supreme Court in exercise of its constitutional power of judicial review,” a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Chandrachud had said in its September 18 order.
Though the court had ordered the Thackeray versus Shinde case to be listed after two weeks, it had not come up. In the Shiv Sena case, a total of 56 MLAs are facing disqualification under the Tenth Schedule. There are 34 disqualification petitions in it.
