The Apex Court however agreed to hear the pleas first on the maintainability point.Last month, the Supreme Court had issued notice to Eknath Shinde and 38 MLAs of his group on Sunil Prabhu’s (Thackeray faction) plea challenging the Maharashtra Speaker’s order.The appeal was filed before the Supreme Court by the aggrieved Uddhav Thackeray-led faction, challenging the Maharashtra State Assembly Speaker’s order which refused to disqualify Eknath Shinde and 15 other MLAs.The faction also challenged the Speaker’s order ruling that Eknath Shinde-led group is the real Shiv Sena. Maharashtra State Assembly Speaker, Rahul Narwekar on January 10 had in his order declared that the faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was “the real political party” and “real Shiv Sena”.The UT group has also challenged before the court, the dismissal of disqualification pleas against Shinde faction MLAs who rebelled & split the party in June 2022, bringing Sena (UT) MLAs under Shinde faction’s control.The UT Group’s petition copy, revealed that the state Assembly Speaker’s orders are erroneous, as it holds that the 2018 leadership structure cannot be relied upon.”The orders of the State Assembly Speaker, is, without the consideration of the main grounds of the disqualification pleas, which have been filed by them (UT group),” the plea stated.”The Speaker’s order ex-facie ultra vires the provisions of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution as much as it appreciates the legislative majority of the ‘Shinde faction’ for the purpose of determining which is the ‘real’ political party. The order is a complete colourable exercise of power and is based on extraneous and irrelevant considerations. The Speaker has relied upon ‘legislative majority’ to determine which is the real political party,” the petition of UT faction, said.”The Speaker must not base his decision as to which group constitutes the political party on a blind appreciation of which group possesses a majority in the Legislative Assembly. This is not a game of numbers, but of something more,” it said.
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