Disqualification issue will be decided by December 31: Narwekar

Mumbai: After the Supreme Court’s recent deadline of December 31 to Rahul Narwekar to decide on the disqualification of Shiv Sena MLAs, the Maharashtra assembly speaker on Thursday declared that he would abide by the deadline, provided both factions of the Sena cooperated. During the hearing, the Shiv Sena led by chief minister Eknath Shinde claimed that it had not got the whip issued by the undivided party last year.

After the hearing on Thursday afternoon at Vidhan Bhavan, Narwekar announced that the next hearing would be held on November 21 and the examination of evidence would begin on that day. He also declared that hearings would be held during the winter session of the state legislature at Nagpur. “I will take a decision by December 31, provided both sides cooperate with me and don’t file a series of applications which will delay the process,” he said. “Please complete the compliance of documents by November 6 and submit the evidence by November 16.” The counsels of both sides agreed to this.

The Thackeray camp was represented by MP Anil Desai, MLAs Sunil Prabhu and Ajay Chaudhary, MLA Ravindra Waikar and MLC Anil Parab. The Shinde side had only one member present, MLA Sanjay Shirsat.

A heated debate ensued between the rival factions’ lawyers after Anil Sakhare, counsel for the Shinde-led Sena, claimed that Shinde and other MLAs had not received the party’s whip last year. “The email addresses on which the whip was sent did not belong to Shinde and his MLAs,” he claimed. “As they did not get the whip, there is no question of violating it.”

The Thackeray-led Sena (UBT) counsel Devdatta Kamat countered Sakhare’s statement, saying that the party’s chief whip Sunil Prabhu had issued the whip to all MLAs, including Shinde and his supporters, and sent it on the email ids provided by the MLAs to the legislative office. “We can submit proof of this,” he said.

A war of words erupted between the counsels when Sakhare kept interrupting Kamat’s argument and passing comments. “Is there a tamasha going on here?” questioned an annoyed Kamat, and asked the speaker to stop the Shinde camp counsel from interrupting him. In another situation, Kamat and speaker Narwekar engaged in a debate over the deadline of November 6 for compliance. When Narwekar objected, saying that Kamat could not ask him to accept documents by referring to the SC order, Kamat pointed out that this date had been given by the speaker himself in an earlier order.

Sena (UBT) MP Anil Desai, speaking to the media after the hearing, reiterated that the whip had been sent to the email ids provided by MLAs to the legislative office. “In the past, the CM Shinde camp claimed that the whip was invalid since it was sent from the email ID of Vijay Joshi, an officer in the legislative party office, whom they claimed they did not know. Now they are claiming that they did not get the whip. This is contradictory. Anyway, we have enough evidence and we will submit it to the speaker.”