Shiv Sena (UBT) Chief Uddhav Thackeray. File
| Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray has requested the Supreme Court for permission to urgently mention for early listing a pending petition challenging an Election Commission of India order allotting the party name ‘Shiv Sena’ and symbol ‘bow and arrow’ to the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
In his urgent letter to the Supreme Court Registrar, Mr. Thackeray said that the Election Commission (EC) order of February 17 in favour of Mr. Shinde was “completely illegal” in view of the top court’s Constitution Bench judgment in May directing the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker to go ahead with disqualification proceedings against Mr. Shinde for defection.
State poll ‘imminent’
Advocate Amit Anand Tiwari, representing Mr. Thackeray, said that the election was “imminent” in the State and Mr. Shinde was “illegally using the party name and symbol.
The Constitution Bench had held that the EC order would take effect only “prospectively”, after the Speaker took a call on the pending disqualification petitions. Mr. Thackeray has recently filed a separate petition in the SC, accusing the Speaker of deliberately delaying the disqualification proceedings.
The letter noted that the case against the EC order was last heard on February 22 and was directed to be listed after three weeks. However, it was not listed.
‘Urgent listing’
“The matter is required to be heard on an urgent basis. Kindly permit the matter to be mentioned before the Court for urgent listing,” the one-page letter requested.
In his appeal, Mr. Thackeray had argued that the EC order was “unfair” and “biased”. He contended that the poll body had failed in its duties as a “neutral arbiter of disputes” under the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order of 1968.
The EC order was based on proceedings under Paragraph 15 of the 1968 Order, which empowered it to identify the “recognised political party” from among rival factions or splinter groups.
‘Undermined party democracy’
But Mr. Thackeray said that the EC’s decision amounted to interference with the party’s 2018 constitution and the results of the intra-party polls, following which Mr. Thackeray was made leader. The EC had refused to recognise the party constitution as “sacrosanct”, terming it an instrument of “fiefdom”, and allowed Mr. Shinde to take over the leadership of the party. Thus, a constitutional authority has undermined the very principles of inner-party democracy, Mr. Thackeray had argued.
More damaging, Mr. Thackeray had said, was the effect of the EC order in recognising and validating a “split” in a political party. This would only encourage legislators in the future to split from their original party without the fear of having to face disqualification proceedings under the Tenth Schedule.
In May, the Constitution Bench, in its judgment, had held that the Speaker could not accept Mr. Shinde’s sole defence that he and his faction had merely ‘split’ from the Shiv Sena party, and not defected. The court had said the defence of a split was no longer available to the Shinde group with the deletion of Paragraph 3 from the Tenth Schedule by the Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act in 2003.
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