Supreme Court has extended the time till January 10 for Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar to pronounce verdict on disqualification petitions against MLAs including Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The apex court in its order said that the Maharashtra speaker will have to take the final call regarding the pleas seeking the disqualification of MLAs in Eknath Shinde’s camp, as well as the Maharashtra chief minister himself.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had asked the the speaker of the Maharashtra assembly to take a final call regarding the disqualification pleas by December 31, but Narwekar sought more time to review the pending petitions.
The Supreme Court bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud remained firm that the verdict by the speaker needs to be delivered by January 10.
The CJI said, “The speaker has indicated that the proceedings will be closed on December 20 and the speaker had sought a reasonable extension of time. Bearing in mind the time limit laid out earlier, we grant extension of time till January 10, 2023 for the speaker to deliver judgment.”
The petitions seeking the disqualification of Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and the MLAs in his camp were filed by the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar bloc of the NCP.
The bench had on September 18 directed the speaker to spell out the time table for adjudication of the disqualification petitions against Eknath Shinde and Shiv Sena MLAs owing allegiance to him who had tied up with the BJP to form a new government in June 2022.
Eknath Shinde, along with dozens of other MLAs in Shiv Sena, rebeled from the Uddhav Thackeray government and decided to join BJP to form a new government in Maharashtra.
This led to former CM Uddhav Thackeray resigning from the post, and Shiv Sena being split into two factions – one headed by Thackeray and other headed by Shinde.
(With inputs from agencies)