SC Agrees To Hear Uddhav Thackeray Plea Against EC Decision

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the plea filed by Uddhav Thackeray faction against the order of Election Commission of India which recognised Eknath Shinde Group as the official Shiv Sena granting them the permission to use the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the bow and arrow symbol for their party. The hearing will take place on Wednesday at 3:30 PM. 

The matter came before the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud for an urgent listing today by Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal. The CJI disagreed to hear the matter today remarking that he needs to read the files before the hearing and then agreed to hear it tomorrow.

The Eknath Shinde Group filed a plea before the Election Commission of India seeking a direction on the question as to which faction is the real Shiv Sena between the Shinde Group and the Thackeray group. The ECI Ordered in the matter that the party name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the party symbol bow and arrow will be retained by the Eknath Shinde Group. The decision of the ECI was based on the strength of the legislative wing of the party to reach its decision and did not rely on the test of the organisational wing. 

The Shinde group had 40 MLAs while the Thackeray group only had 15 MLAs in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly. Similarly, in the Lok Sabha as well, out of the 18 members, 13 members supported Shinde group while the Thackeray group had only 5 supporters. This derived the decision of the ECI in the favour of the Shinde Group.

Uddhav Thackeray has approached the apex court challenging the order of the ECI which gave the status of official Shiv Sena to the Shinde Group. A constitution Bench of the Supreme Court also has a batch of petitions pending before it relating to the political crisis of 2022 which led to the change in power in Maharashtra. The issues being considered in that case are powers of the Governor of a State, power of speaker of a legislative assembly, scope of speaker’s role to initiate proceedings against MLAs.