Ajit Pawar faction ‘real NCP’; MLAs can't be disqualified: Maharashtra Speaker

Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Thursday dismissed petitions filed by the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP seeking disqualification of MLAs who broke away in July last year and ruled that the Ajit Pawar-led group was the real Nationalist Congress Party when two groups emerged in the party.

Narwekar said the 41 MLAs who joined the Ajit Pawar group could not be disqualified as they constituted the "will of the party". The Speaker also referred to the Election Commission’s ruling last week, allotting the name and ‘wall clock’ symbol of the party to Ajit Pawar’s camp.

The poll panel in its order on February 6 held the Ajit Pawar’s camp as the ‘real NCP’ and in a separate order in the following day allotted a new name—Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar—to the Sharad Pawar camp in view of the upcoming Rajya Sabha election.

Ajit Pawar had walked away with a majority of NCP MLAs last year and supported the BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in Maharashtra.