The Supreme Court on Friday said it will hear on March 7 the petition filed by the Uddhav Thackeray faction against the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker's verdict declaring CM Eknath Shinde's faction as the real Shiv Sena.


The case was again mentioned in front of the three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud.


On January 22, The top court had issued notices to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and other MLAs of his group on a petition filed by Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena challenging the January 10 verdict of Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on the disqualification petitions.


On February 5, Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal told the CJI's bench that the petition filed by Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena challenging the decision of Maharashtra speaker was not listed, despite an order for it to be listed.



On this, the CJI had assured Sibal that the case will be listed and heard. The UBT Shiv Sena faction has time and again emphasised in the court, that the case should be heard before the next Assembly elections are held in Maharashtra. The top court had also observed that the issue of disqualification petition should be decided before the elections.


Maharashtra is slated to go into Assembly elections before October this year. The top court's decision will decide the fate of the fight for "real Shiv Sena".


On January 15, the Shiv Sena faction led by Thackeray moved the apex court against Maharashtra speaker Rahul Narwekar dismissing disqualification petitions against Eknath Shinde and 38 MLAs. Following this the Shinde faction challenged the verdict in Bombay High Court.

 

The Shinde faction has challenged the Speaker's verdict for not disqualifying the MLAs in Uddhav's faction.

On January 10, Maharashtra Assembly Speaker pronounced his verdict, in favour of the Eknath Shinde faction. However, he did not disqualify MLAs from Uddhav's faction as well.



Narwekar said that he relied on the Supreme Court's judgment in the Subhash Desai case, and the jurisdiction of the Speaker in deciding defection petitions as provided by the 10th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which deals with the anti-defection law.


The Speaker, while delivering his verdict, said he was of the view that the last relevant constitution of the Shiv Sena with the Election Commission of India was the one submitted in 1999, and not the 2018 one. The apex court had asked the Speaker to consider the relevant constitution to arrive at a decision.