Maharashtra Speaker rejects pleas to disqualify NCP MLAs of Ajit Pawar faction

Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Thursday dismissed the petitions to disqualify MLAs belonging to Ajit Pawar’s faction after ruling it as the real Nationalist Congress Party.

Delivering a verdict on the disqualification petitions filed by the two factions within the NCP against each other, the Speaker said that Ajit Pawar’s faction substantially outnumbered the Sharad Pawar faction in the state legislature.

“I hold that the Ajit Pawar faction enjoys an overwhelming majority within the NCP,” Narwekar declared.

The Speaker ruled that the actions and statements of Ajit Pawar’s faction between June 30 and July 2 last year were not acts of defection but intra-party dissent.

Narwekar said that the provision of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which deals with the disqualification of legislators on grounds of defection, should not be used to silence the members or to crush the opposition.

That would be a complete abuse of the law and contrary to the contention of the law, he said.

Earlier this month, the Election Commission of India ruled that the faction led by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar will inherit the NCP’s name and its clock symbol, dealing a blow to party patriarch Sharad Pawar just months ahead of general elections.

“This commission holds that the faction led by the petitioner, Ajit Anantrao Pawar, is the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and is entitled to use its name and reserved symbol ‘clock’ for the purposes of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968,” the 140-page order said.