Today in Politics: SC to hear Sharad Pawar’s plea against Ajit; Rahul v/s Smriti in Amethi

The battle of the Pawars is heating up inside the Maharashtra Assembly and at the Supreme Court.

Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Thursday ruled on the disqualification pleas that the Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar-led groups had filed against each other. After the rebellion by the Ajit Pawar group in July 2023 and the swearing-in of nine MLAs among them as ministers, the Sharad Pawar faction filed disqualification petitions against the MLAs.

Later, it filed two more disqualification petitions against 20 and 11 MLAs respectively. In September 2023, the Ajit Pawar group went on an offensive and filed disqualification petitions against 10 members of the Sharad Pawar group.

In his ruling, Narwekar declared the Ajit Pawar’s faction as “the real political party” and held that Ajit Pawar’s assertions about vote share and majority in the legislature were not disputed by the Sharad Pawar faction.

“Ajit Pawar faction constituted the will of the party,” he underlined.

Narwekar’s ruling comes two weeks after the Election Commission declared the Ajit Pawar-led faction as the real NCP and allotted it the party’s clock symbol.

Sharad Pawar, whose faction is now called NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), termed Narvekar’s decision as “an injustice”, one that was made through a ”settlement.”

On Friday, Sharad Pawar moved the Supreme Court for an urgent listing of his plea challenging the EC’s ruling that recognised the Ajit Pawar-led faction as the real NCP.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta and KV Viswanathan is likely to hear the matter.

In context: The issue of what constituted the “real party” was also debated earlier in the case of the two Senas — one led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde; the other led by Uddhav Thackeray. The