Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Thursday dismissed petitions filed by the rival factions of the NCP seeking disqualification of each other’s MLAs and also ruled that the faction led by Ajit Pawar was the real Nationalist Congress Party when two groups emerged in July 2023.
"All the petitions seeking disqualification of MLAs are rejected," Narwekar said.
The Speaker noted that questioning party founder Sharad Pawar's decisions or defying his wishes did not amount to defection but it was only internal dissent, and added that the tenth schedule of the Constitution was misused in this case.
Party leadership can not use the tenth schedule to stifle dissent of large number of members by threatening to disqualify them, he said.
Noting that the Ajit Pawar faction had "overwhelming" legislative majority when the party split, Narwekar said the 41 MLAs who joined the 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 the 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.
