Uddhav Thackeray would have come back as chief minister of Maharashtra had he not tied the hands of the five Supreme Court judges by resigning last year to pre-empt a floor test on the floor of the assembly.
The Eknath Shinde faction had not adhered to the law by passing a no-confidence motion against Thackeray which would have justified calling for a floor test.
“Even if it is assumed these MLAs wanted to exit the government, they constituted only a faction,” Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud declared in open court, making it mandatory for a no-confidence motion to be passed against the government to justify a floor test which precipitated Thackeray’s resignation. This implies the present Eknath Shinde government in Maharashtra is not legal because it flouted Constitutional norms and procedures.
The former Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari behaved in a partisan manner by calling for a floor test to ascertain whether the Shinde or Thackeray factions were in a majority without a no-confidence motion being passed.
By doing so, the governor violated his Constitutional oath of office to be impartial or neutral in a political tug-of-war. Neither the Constitution nor the law empower the governor to enter the political arena to play a role either in inter-party or intra-party disputes by using the floor test as a means to resolve intra-party or intra-party disputes.
It follows logically that the present government did not come to power by legal means as they were helped by high Constitutional functionaries like the governor, the Election Commission and the then Speaker of the legislative assembly who all violated their Constitutional oaths to be neutral. Whether the present Speaker will remain politically neutral while deciding the disqualification petitions remains to be seen.
That the previous governor, speaker and Election Commission were partisan was evidenced by the judges’ observation that the Speaker’s decision to appoint the Shinde-group backed Gogawale as the whip of the Shiv Sena party was illegal. “Nothing in any of the communications relied on by the governor indicated that the dissatisfied MLAs wanted to withdraw support to the government,” the judges observed.
But on the vital point as to whether it is the Eknath Shinde faction or the Uddhav Thackeray faction which constitutes the real Shiv Sena, the Supreme Court said it was the Speaker (Rahul Narwekar) and the Election Commission which has to decide which faction is the real Shiv Sena. The question of disqualification will also be decided by the Speaker, opined the Supreme Court.
What emerges from all this is that the present Eknath Shinde government will continue in power till the next elections are held unless there is another round of toppling of this government. In any case, MLAs from the Thackeray faction are already in touch with the Shinde group to join it for plums of office.
