The Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Nawrekar found a simple but partisan solution to the complicated Shiv Sena versus Shiv Sena battle. In upholding the Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena and maintaining the status quo after the split without disqualifying anyone under the anti-defection law, the Speaker was able to uphold the continuance of the government.
The Speaker’s dramatic ruling, premised on various conjectures, including that the Shiv Sena party’s 2018 constitution could not be considered because it may not have been filed with the Election Commission, is certain to be subjected to legal challenges in the highest court, which had mandated the Speaker to first rule on the problematical matter of disqualification of MLAs as sought by both wings of the Shiv Sena.
The Speaker took his time to arrive at this avowedly pragmatic solution that pays no heed to the matter of defection, party split, alliance formation for changing the government, etc. But then the matter had become convoluted after the two allies, BJP and Shiv Sena, which fought the 2019 elections together, broke up after the people’s mandate was delivered in favour of the alliance.
It is open to question whether the solution passes the test of democracy as defined by the Constitution, but then legislators choosing to take divergent paths after being elected has been posing a perennial problem to the fundamentals on which rules are based. In realpolitik, the will of rebellious legislators in defying the party whip has invariably prevailed.
Maharashtra politics has been in a confused state bordering on turmoil since 2019 when the will of the people casting the popular vote was ignored and a post-poll alliance formed in which the Shiv Sena benefited from the primacy granted by allies in its leader, Uddhav Thackeray, being elected as the first chief minister from the party.
A further challenge for the Speaker lies in his having to rule on the NCP factions since a section of its legislators defected and joined the Shinde government. Ultimately, the ball will be in the people’s court as to which factions of the Shiv Sena and the NCP they would support. It is on the cards that any legal challenges to the status quo, conveniently ordered by the Speaker, would also be time-consuming, leaving the fundamental issues hanging.
The nearness of the Lok Sabha polls lends them an immediacy against which the complex rulings on legislative matters, including the right of the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker to rule on disqualifications when a no-confidence motion may have been moved against them, may have to wait. Courts have in any case shown reluctance to interfere with the powers of a crucial legislative functionary like the Speaker.
The Maharashtra case is, however, convoluted and invites scrutiny on so many issues, like the ruling party legislators splitting or defecting and the partisan behaviour of legislative functionaries which may be inevitable but leads to complications, that the judiciary may be tempted to get to the heart of it in the hope of establishing the importance of the fundamentals governing the people’s mandate in an electoral democracy.
