The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to list on Thursday, March 7, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s plea challenging the Maharashtra assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar’s January 10, 2024 decision rejecting their petitions seeking disqualification of state Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and 38 MLAs backing him and recognising the Shinde group as the real Shiv Sena.

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, who headed a bench comprising Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, posted the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s petition for hearing on March 7 upon a mentioning by senior advocate Kapil Sibal requesting for an early hearing of the petition.

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As Sibal urged the bench to list it on March 7, the CJI said, “We will list it for hearing on March 7″. The bench said that several matters, which were to be listed (today) on March 1, could not be accommodated in the list as the bench had to rise early.

The SS (UBT)’s petition was to be listed today.

The Supreme Court on January 22, 2024 issued a notice to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and 38 MLAs supporting him on Shiv Sena (UBT)’s plea challenging Speaker Narwekar’s January 10, 2024 order.

Shiv Sena (UBT)’s chief whip in the state legislature Sunil Prabhu had approached the top court against the Speaker’s decision.

The Chief Minister Eknath Shinde group, too, had approached the Bombay High Court challenging Speaker Narwekar’s refusal to disqualify the Uddhav Thackeray group MLAs. The High Court has already issued a notice on the Shinde group’s petition.

In its petition, the Thackeray faction said Speaker Narwekar’s decision was a “colourable” exercise of power based on “extraneous and irrelevant” considerations.

The disqualification petitions against Shinde and the 38 rebel MLAs were filed on June 23, 2022 by Sunil Prabhu, who had been appointed the chief whip of the Shiv Sena legislature party by Uddhav Thackeray, after the MLAs backing Shinde revolted against him (Thackeray).

On May 11, 2023, a five-judge Constitution bench had said that it could not unseat the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government and reinstate Uddhav Thackeray as the Chief Minister because he (Uddhav Thackeray) chose to resign instead of facing the floor test ordered by the Governor.

In August 2022, the top court’s three-judge bench had referred to a five-judge Constitution bench the issues involved in the petition filed by the Shiv Sena’s rival group in connection with the Maharashtra political crisis.

On June 29, 2022, the top court gave the go-ahead for the floor test in the Maharashtra Assembly on June 30. It had refused to stay the Maharashtra Governor’s direction to then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to prove his majority support on the floor of the House on June 30.

After the June 29, 2022, order, Uddhav Thackeray announced his resignation as the Chief Minister and Eknath Shinde was later sworn in as his successor.