MUMBAI: Maharashtra state assembly speaker Rahul Narvekar on Monday reserved his order fixing the schedule for hearing disqualifications petitions of Shiv Sena MLAs and clubbing all these disqualifications petitions. The next hearing is likely on October 13.
The Supreme Court’s directive asked the speaker of the Maharashtra state assembly to submit the progress report and schedule of disqualification petitions hearing within a week. Then, Rahul Narvekar called both the factions of Shiv Sena for the hearing on Monday, but the factions were not on the same page over the matter.
During the hearing at Vidhan Bhavan, speaker Rahul Narvekar said that he is not in a hurry and as per natural justice, each MLA who is facing disqualifications should get adequate time to hear out his case and arguments. “The justice is important, not the delay in hearing and disposing of the petitions,” the Speaker said.
Anil Parab, Shiv Sena MLC (UBT) said that the government is just buying time. He said that the Supreme Court has clearly given the guidelines for disqualifications of MLA petitions, but the hearing has been postponed for some or other reasons.
“Justice delayed is justice denied. If the disqualifications of Shiv Sena’s MLAs are of a similar nature, then why is the speaker not clubbing all these petitions together and hearing them out rather than spending separate time for individual petitions? It will consume a lot of time. The Supreme Court had given a reasonable time, not indefinite as it has mentioned in recent directives,” Anil Parab said.
Sanjay Shirsat, Shiv Sena MLA (Shinde) said that the speaker heard them out on Monday. He said they requested separate hearings over disqualifications of MLAs while some of them wanted the online hearing. “There should not be a hurry while disposing of the disqualification petitions. We are against clubbing the petitions,” Shirsat said.
Parab said that the speaker in his next hearing on October 13 will decide whether to club all these petitions and hear them out separately. “Today, we expected that the speaker would share some tangible things with them, but the hearing was postponed again. The Supreme Court has given clear-cut guidelines such as who is the chief whip and which is the political party – legislative and organizational, so there is no point in delaying the hearing. We are confident that the speaker will give justice in their favor,” Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Anil Desai added.