The Bombay High Court has taken action on Wednesday by serving a notice to Maharashtra assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar and 10 legislators associated with Sharad Pawar's NCP faction. This move comes in response to petitions contesting the speaker's ruling to refrain from disqualifying them.
Anil Patil, the chief whip of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) under the leadership of Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, lodged two petitions challenging the speaker's decision not to disqualify the 10 MLAs aligned with the Sharad Pawar camp.
A division of bench of Justices GS Kulkarni and Firdosh Pooniwalla on Wednesday also issued notice to the Maharashtra legislature secretariat and directed all the respondents to file their affidavits to the petitions.
The High Court has scheduled the case for additional hearings on March 14. In his petitions, Patil urged the high court to annul the speaker's recent decision, deeming it legally flawed, and to disqualify all ten legislators. The petitions contest the validity and appropriateness of Narwekar's ruling, which dismissed the disqualification petitions filed against the MLAs aligned with the Sharad Pawar faction.
Patil's counsel Mukul Rohatgi on Wednesday told the court that the major findings made by the speaker were in Ajit Pawar's favour except the part where the 10 MLAs were not disqualified. The speaker has ruled that the Ajit Pawar-led NCP is the real political party. Even the Election Commission had ruled in Ajit Pawar's favour. But still the 10 MLAs (from Sharad Pawar's faction) were not disqualified, Rohatgi said.
A turf war has erupted between Ajit Pawar and his uncle Sharad Pawar following Ajit's decision to join the Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government along with eight MLAs in July 2023. The factions are embroiled in a dispute primarily centered around two issues: ownership of the party and whether MLAs from the opposing faction are subject to disqualification under Section 2(1)(A) of the Tenth Schedule.