The faction led by former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Monday approached the Supreme Court against the recent decision of the Election Commission of India recognising the Eknath Shinde camp as the official Shiv Sena party.
The matter was mentioned before Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud by Senior Advocate Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, requesting it to be listed along with the ongoing cases before the Constitution Bench.
Noting that the matter was not included in today’s mentioning list, the CJI directed Singhvi to mention the matter tomorrow.
On February 17, the ECI had recognised the Eknath Shinde camp as the real Shiv Sena, permitting them to use the party name and the bow and arrow symbol in the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly by-elections.
The poll panel allowed the Uddhav Thackeray camp to use the name ‘Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’ and the symbol of ‘flaming torch’ for the bypolls.
On February 16, Uddhav Thackeray had termed the Commission’s decision as ‘murder’ of democracy and a ‘theft’.
Stating that Shiv Sena was founded by his father Balasaheb Thackeray, Uddhav said he would stake claim for the party’s name and symbol before the Supreme Court.
He called his rival and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as a ‘traitor,’ who would not change.
In its 78-page order on Friday, the Election Commission had observed that based on the votes polled in during the 2019 Assembly polls of Maharashtra, Shinde’s MLAs got some 76 percent vote share while the Thackeray camp MLAs bagged 23.5 percent. The Shiv Sena won 55 MLA seats in the 2019 elections.
A Constitution Bench of the Apex Court, headed by the CJI, is currently conducting hearings on Constitutional issues related to the two factions. Maharashtra had plunged into a political crisis in June, 2022, after Eknath Shinde revolted against Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and formed a new faction with his MLas.
Shinde later executed a bloodless coup and unseated Uddhav from the CM’s chair. The two factions have since fought a bitter battle for the name of Shiv Sena and its bow and arrow symbol.
The Commission noted in its order that the constitution of the Sena, which was amended in 2018, has become completely undemocratic.
The EC said it was convinced that the appointments in the party were mutilated to undemocratically appoint people from a coterie as office bearers, even when there were no elections. The Commission noted that such party structure failed to inspire confidence.
With the new constitution, the amendments had undone the act of introducing democratic norms in the Party Constitution of 1999, brought by late Balasaheb Thackeray at the insistence of the Commission, it added.
The poll body observed that the undemocratic norms of the original constitution of Shiv Sena, which had been not accepted by the Commission in 1999, were now brought back in a surreptitious manner, further making the party akin to a fiefdom.