Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Feb 22: The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the Election Commission of India (ECI) order which had recognised Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena and granted permission to them to use the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the bow and arrow symbol for their party
But for the bye-elections in Chinchwad and Kasba Peth, a bench consisting of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices PS Narasimha, and JB Pardiwala gave permission to the rival Uddhav Thackeray faction to use the name “Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)” and the “flaming torch” symbol.
“The ECI order is confined to a symbol. Now we cannot pass an order to stay the election commission order. we are entertaining the SLP. We cannot stay the ECI order today,” the Court said.
The Court also issueed notice in the matter and listed the case after two weeks.
“Issue notice. Pending further orders protection granted under Para 133(4) (allowing Thackeray faction to use flaming torch symbol) under the impugned order of Election Commission shall continue to operate. List this after 2 weeks,” the order said.
The Uddhav Thackeray faction has petitioned the court to overturn the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) decision to recognise the Eknath Shinde faction as the legitimate Shiv Sena and to allow them permission to use the name “Shiv Sena” and the bow and arrow emblem as their party’s symbols.
The issue began when the Shiv Sena political party divided into two groups, one led by Thackeray and the other by Shinde. Thackeray was eventually succeeded as chief minister of Maharashtra by Shinde after the split in June 2022.
Afterwards, Shinde petitioned the ECI to assert his ownership of the name “Shiv Sena” and the bow and arrow logo.
Instead of relying on an organisational wing test, the ECI relied on the strength of the party’s legislative wing to make its choice. The ECI claimed that this was the case because, despite trying to apply the organisational wing test, it was unable to reach a satisfactory result because the most recent party constitution was not on file.
The ECI had emphasised that both factions’ claims of having a numerical majority in the organisational wing were unsatisfactory.
As a result, it had moved forward by relying on the majority test in the legislative wing.
In the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, it was reported that the Shinde group had 40 MLAs, compared to the Thackeray faction’s 15 MLAs. Similar to the Lok Sabha, just 5 of the 18 members of parliament supported the Thackeray faction, while 13 supported the Shinde side.
As a result, on the basis of the foregoing, the ECI decided in favour of the Shinde group and permitted it to keep the Shiv Sena name as well as the bow and arrow symbol.
