Shinde Govt To Continue, No SC Relief To Uddhav For Quitting Without Floor Test

The Supreme Court has said the Maharashtra Speaker's decision to appoint a chief whip was illegal, but it could not grant relief to Uddhav Thackeray as he did not face a Floor test in the state assembly.

Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde ( Image Source :PTI )

A Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to give relief to former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray as it observed that he did not face a Floor test in the Maharashtra assembly. The apex court pronounced a verdict on a batch of petitions related to the 2022 Maharashtra political crisis that saw Eknath Shinde taking over as Chief Minister from Uddhav Thackeray following a split in the Shiv Sena. It criticised the Maharashtra Speaker's decision to appoint Gogawale (Shinde group) as chief Whip of the Shiv Sena party as illegal.

It referred the 2016 Nabam Rebia five-judge verdict related to the power of speaker on disqualification of MLAs to a larger bench The top court, news agency PTI reported.

Supreme Court On Maharashtra Govt Crisis — Key Points

• Supreme Court said that the 2016 Nabam Rebia case which held that Speaker cannot initiate disqualification proceedings when a resolution seeking his removal is pending, requires reference to a larger bench. The top court said that issues such as whether a notice to the removal of the Speaker will restrict the powers of the Speaker to issue disqualification notices need examination by a larger bench.
  
  
• Talking about the merits of the case, CJI DY Chandrachud said that it will not be right for democracy to separate the whip from the party as it is the party that seeks votes from the public and MLA alone cannot decide who will be the whip. Uddhav Thackeray was chosen as the leader in the meeting of party legislators. On July 3, the Speaker approved the new whip of the Shiv Sena. Thus, there are two leaders and two whips, he mentioned.
  
  
• Supreme Court said that the state assembly Speaker should recognise only the whip appointed by the political party. It further stated that the Governor had no objective material to call for a Floor test in the Assembly, it cannot be used as a medium to resolve inter or intra-party disputes.

• According to the SC bench, the Governor erred in relying on the resolution of a faction of MLAs of Shiv Sena to conclude that Uddhav Thackeray had lost the support of the majority of MLAs. "Governor had no objective material to doubt the confidence of the Uddhav Thackeray-led government and call for a Floor test. The resolution relied on by the government did not indicate that MLAs wanted to withdraw support. Even if it is assumed that the MLAs wanted to exit the government, they constituted only a faction," the Supreme Court stated.

• However, the top court said that status quo ante cannot be ordered by restoring the Maha Vikas Aghadi government as then CM Uddhav Thackeray did not face the floor test and tendered his resignation. Hence, the Governor was justified in administering the oath to Eknath Shinde with the support of the largest party BJP.
  
  
• Supreme Court asked the Speaker to decide on disqualification petitions within a reasonable time. 

A five-judge bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices MR Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli, and P S Narasimha had reserved its verdict in the matter on March 16 after hearing the matter for eight days. 

Maharashtra Govt Crisis

On June 29, 2022, the Supreme Court refused to stay the Governor's direction to the 31-month-old MVA government led by Thackeray to take a floor test. Sensing defeat, Thackeray had resigned before taking the floor test. On its part, the Thackeray faction urged the court to "turn back the clock" and restore the "status quo ante" as it had done in 2016 when it reinstalled Nabam Tuki as the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh.

Last year, Shinde and 39 MLAs rebelled against the undivided Sena party leadership, which eventually resulted in the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government and the party's split.

Shinde was sworn in as CM on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray quit the post. BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy CM. 

On February 17 this year, the Election Commission (EC) recognised the Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena based on the majority in the Maharashtra Assembly. The Shinde faction has 40 MLAs in the Assembly as against the Thackeray faction's 15.