The Eknath Shinde faction informed the Supreme Court that the Uddhav Thackeray faction’s request to refer a 2016 Constitution bench decision to another bench of seven judges was purely ‘academic’ and that the court must first determine whether the dispute between the two sides is still active before hearing arguments on the constitutional issues arising from the split within the Shiv Sena factions.
Senior attorney Harish Salve, speaking on behalf of the Shinde group, stated that ‘this court needs to examine as to what extent the matter is alive and what remains.’
The debate took place as a Constitution bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud was debating a number of petitions regarding the political crisis in Maharashtra last year that were submitted by competing factions claiming to be the ‘real’ Shiv Sena.
Senior attorney Kapil Sibal, who was representing the Thackeray faction and was on the bench with justices MR Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli, and PS Narasimha, reiterated that the court must take into consideration the issue of referring the 2016 ruling in the Nabam Rebia case to a seven-judge bench.
The 2016 ruling concerned the Speaker’s authority to address member disqualification requests and held that the Speaker cannot address a member’s request for disqualification while a resolution calling for his removal is up for adjudication in the Assembly.
Sibal had questioned this judgement rendered by a five-judge bench and suggested that the entire group of cases be forwarded to a seven-judge bench to make a final determination regarding the validity of the 2016 judgement.
‘The argument to refer the matter to seven judges is now purely academic,’ Salve told the court.
According to the Thackeray faction, this will be the opening argument on which the court must render a preliminary judgement before moving on to the main case.
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