Pinnacle Court directs Maharashtra speaker to defer disqualification proceedings

The apex court today asked Maharashtra Assembly Speaker to defer fratricidal disqualification proceedings initiated by rival Shiv Sena factions against one another after present CM Eknath Shinde-led 39 MLAs rebelled to dismantle the Uddhav Thackeray headed MVA government.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal and Devadatt Kamat anxiously told a bench of magistrate N V Ramana and Justices Krishna Murari and Him Kohli that the Speaker should be restrained from taking a call on the disqualification petitions pending before him and conceded that no MLA from either faction of Sena should be disqualified till the apex court decided multiple petitions filed by either side. 

Finding law officer Tushar Mehta appearing for Maharashtra governor, the CJI told him to convey to the Speaker to not proceed with the disqualification proceedings pending before him till further orders.

Though the pending petitions were scheduled to be listed on Monday for detailed hearing as per the orders of a vacation bench headed by Justice Surya Kant, the CJI-led bench said it might take it slow to assign the bunch of petitions associated with the Maharashtra political imbroglio between June 21-30 to an appropriate bench.

The first to approach the SC were Eknath Shinde and 16 of the 39 rebel MLAs who got disqualification notices once they refused to attend Shiv Sena party meeting after rebelling against Thackeray's leadership and moving to 'safe location' in Guwahati. 

The vacation bench had asked the then deputy Speaker to not proceed with the disqualification proceedings and allowed the trust vote to require place. Repeated petitions were filed by the Thackeray-led faction through its former chief whip Sunil Prabhu seeking disqualification of the rebel MLAs.

It was followed by a fresh petition by Thakeray faction through Subhash Desai challenging the Governor's decision to ask Shinde to create a government after he claimed support of BJP. Many applications seeking various reliefs too are filed to supplement the pleadings within the pending petitions. As and when a SC bench takes up the matters, it might pander to a mountain of papers.