Ajit Pawar faction moves court over Speaker not disqualifying Sharad Pawar MLAs

Mumbai,UPDATED: Feb 20, 2024 20:25 IST

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's NCP faction chief whip, Anil Bhaidas Patil, moved the Bombay High Court on Tuesday challenging the decision by Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar not to disqualify 10 MLAs belonging to Sharad Pawar's faction.

Ajit Pawar's faction, recognised by both the Election Commission of India and the Maharashtra Speaker as the legitimate NCP, filed the plea through advocates Shrirang Varma and Abhikalp Pratap Singh. Patil challenges the "legality, propriety, and correctness" of the Speaker's order dismissing disqualification petitions against 10 MLAs from Sharad Pawar's faction. The plea seeks the court to declare the Speaker's order as legally flawed, quash it, and disqualify all 10 MLAs.

Anil Patil filed two petitions against the 10 MLAs, including Jayant Patil and Anil Deshmukh, from Sharad Pawar's faction. The petitions were mentioned before a division bench led by Justice GS Kulkarni on Tuesday, with the bench scheduling a hearing for Wednesday.

In his petitions, Patil contends that the Speaker wrongly concluded that the split in the party was intra-party dissent. He argues that once the Speaker has ruled that the NCP led by Ajit Pawar is the "real political party," the disqualification petitions should have been allowed.

The Sharad Pawar-led NCP experienced a vertical split in July last year when Ajit Pawar and eight MLAs joined the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government. The NCP, founded by Sharad Pawar in 1999, witnessed a dispute over party ownership and whether MLAs from the opposing faction should face disqualification under Section 2(1)(A) of the Tenth Schedule.

On February 15, Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar ruled that Ajit Pawar's party was the legitimate Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) but rejected calls to disqualify MLAs from either faction. The factions had been contesting the party's ownership and the disqualification of MLAs from the rival faction.

This situation mirrors the scenario with the Shiv Sena, where a similar split occurred, and the Election Commission and the Speaker ruled in favour of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, considering it the authentic one over Uddhav Thackeray's faction. Thackeray's faction challenged the Speaker's order in the Supreme Court, while Shinde's Shiv Sena's chief whip Bharat Gogawale approached the Bombay High Court seeking the disqualification of Thackeray's Shiv Sena MLAs.