Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 26: Even as the rebel Shiv Sena and a section of the BJP legislators in Maharashtra are getting increasingly impatient over the delay in cabinet formation, the Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to hear an application of the Uddhav Thackeray faction for staying the proceedings of the Election Commission of India (ECI) for recognition of the “real” Shiv Sena faction.
On oral plea from the Thackeray faction on Tuesday for urgent listing of the application for the stay filed on Monday, the chief justice NV Ramana issued orders to list the application also on August 1 when other issues over the breaking of the Sena, resignation of the Thackeray government and swearing-in of the rebel leader Eknath Shinde as the chief minister had been fixed for hearing in the apex court.
The date was fixed after the advocate for the Shinde faction informed the court that the ECI had summoned all the concerned parties for hearing on August 8 on the Shinde faction’s application for recognising it as the “real” Shiv Sena with right to the party’s symbol of “bow and arrow.”
In an oral mentioning before a Bench led by the CJI Ramana, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Devadatt Kamat said the court should stop the ECI proceedings from going on. The apex court was already looking into every facet of the entire gamut of legal issues connected to the recent developments in Maharashtra politics, right from the breaking away of Shinde and his supporters to the resignation of Thackeray as Chief Minister, to the floor test and all other related issues. “They are claiming the party and the symbol. The Election Commission is going ahead with the proceedings when this court is seized of the issue…” Sibal submitted.
Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul for Shinde countered that the apex court had only stayed the hand of the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker in continuing with the disqualification proceedings against certain legislators. The ECI proceedings were altogether different. The ECI had issued notice for hearing on August 8, several days after the Supreme Court hearing fixed for August 1. The CJI ordered the Thackeray camp’s application to be listed along with the other Maharashtra crisis cases on August 1.
Loyalists of Uddhav Thackeray have alleged that the Election Commission did not pay heed to their request to stop its proceedings in order to avoid any irreversible changes while the court was seized of the case.
“Despite being asked not to precipitate the matter and stay its hand, the Hon’ble ECI has decided to initiate proceedings… Such proceedings will be in the teeth of settled law that an inquiry into a matter which is sub judice before the court amounts to interference with the judicial proceedings,” the application said.
On July 20, a Bench led by Chief Justice Ramana had queried whether the dissent of Shinde’s faction, without subsequently forming a new party or merging with another, amounted to a “split” from the original Shiv Sena party.
A “split” from the original political party without a subsequent merger with another party or formation of a new faction is no longer a defence from disqualification under the Tenth Schedule (anti-defection law) of the Constitution.
While agreeing to look into this question in depth, the apex court had asked the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker to maintain status quo on the disqualification proceedings against MLAs from both Shinde and Thackeray factions. The latter group was issued disqualification notices by the Speaker after voting against Shinde in the floor test. The court had directed the Assembly secretariat to keep its records in safe custody.
With inordinate delay in finalising his cabinet formation after receiving clearance from the BJP central leadership, Shinde is also learnt to be facing another problem, restlessness among his supporters who rebelled against the party chief and the then chief minister to topple the Maha Vikas Aghadi government headed by Thackeray.
One of the most industrialised state – Maharashtra – is being run by a two-member cabinet, Shinde and his deputy the BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis, for nearly a month now since the duo took oath in an urgently organised ceremony on the evening on June 30 with still no indication when would they be able to induct others in the ministry.
Shinde and Fadnavis teamed up to topple the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government by pulling Sena legislators away from Thackeray. The duo seemingly had it easy in bringing down the Thackeray government with a combination of investigative agency threats and ministry offers that sent Sena MLAs running to the BJP’s arms. But the celebration among the other Sena rebels and a section of the BJP members aspiring to get a berth in the cabinet once their party returned to power, has been short-lived.
The reason apparently is the delay in finagling the cabinet formation and sharing the spoils. In their haste to topple the Thackeray government, Shinde and Fadnavis made big promises to the defectors. Delivery is proving to be difficult, with an impatient “big brother” BJP demanding a bigger share of the goodies.
Fadnavis, who was Chief Minister in the last BJP-Shiv Sena government, was forced to swallow his pride and he reluctantly came on board as deputy to Shinde (who had earlier worked under him) after he was told by BJP president JP Nadda that it was not an offer he could refuse. Amit Shah, Union Home Minister, told Fadnavis that not joining the Shinde government could be a career limiting move for him, sources say. Shah advised Fadnavis to prove his generosity and give stability to the Shinde government, keeping his hopes alive with the assurance that politics is never short of surprises.
The central BJP was worried about Fadnavis becoming a rival power centre in Mumbai. Fadnavis is now on board, but the sharing and caring is not happening, yet. As a consequence a large state like Maharashtra is virtually being run by two men. With no cabinet in place, a decision to cut trees in the Aarey forest in Mumbai for a controversial car shed project has been cleared. Thackeray had nixed the project saying it was environmentally untenable.
The two-man cabinet has been making frequent trips, at least half-a-dozen in three weeks, to Delhi to get Shah and Nadda to break the deadlock over portfolios, with little success so far. Shinde is learnt to be adamant about controlling major portfolios like the Public Works Department, Home and Finance. Fadnavis, settling for the number two spot, needs his flex – a meaty portfolio. The BJP is single largest in the Maharashtra assembly and expect to get a bigger share and more important departments than the Sena rebels but each of the 40 Sena rebels want some share of the spoils in taking the risk of revolting against the party leadership. The BJP members opposed to Shinde having been given the chief minister’s chair already carping about zero accountability and zero power with the BJP.
Fadnavis and Shinde are also spending hours with their legal eagles as the Uddhav Thackeray faction files cases in the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the new government. The Thackeray faction is fighting for the bow and arrow symbol of the Shiv Sena.
After enabling what appeared to be a bloodless coup, Shinde’s MLAs are getting impatient waiting for their rewards. A group of 40 defectors, including eight ministers, have all been promised a status upgrade. Shinde is now fielding daily calls from the MLAs who powered his coup. The Maharashtra assembly session is likely to start in August and both Shinde and Fadnavis would like to have a cabinet in place by then.
The all-important elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the richest corporation in the country with an annual budget of ₹ 45,000 crore, is coming up. This will be the first electoral face-off between the Thackeray Sena and the Shinde Sena, and both sides will be pulling out all the stops but before that they would at least have to put the state government in place to show that the Sena-BJP equation is working.