Taking a combative stand against the rebel Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP group has petitioned the Deputy Chairperson of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, Neelam Gorhe, to disqualify the rebel NCP legislators in the Upper House of the State Legislature.
According to sources, two applications from the Sharad Pawar faction — one in the name of NCP State president and Sharad Pawar loyalist Jayant Patil, and the other in the name of Jitendra Ahwad, general secretary of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP group — have been received by Ms. Gorhe regarding the disqualification of rebel NCP MLCs.
Mr. Patil’s application seeks the disqualification of NCP legislators Vikram Kale, Satish Chavan, Amol Mitkari and Aniket Tatkare in the Council, while Mr. Ahwad’s petition urges the disqualification of veteran NCP leader and longtime MLC Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar.
The move comes more than two months after Mr. Pawar’s nephew, Ajit Pawar split the NCP to align with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and took eight other NCP leaders with him on July 2 this year.
It also comes a day after the 82-year-old NCP patriarch, in a meeting of his faction’s leaders and cadre in Mumbai on Sunday (August 10), suggested he may not take back the rebel NCP leaders, and that fresh faces in the party could be given tickets in the upcoming polls.
On July 2, the very day of Mr. Ajit Pawar’s rebellion, the Sharad Pawar group had moved a disqualification petition to Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar against the nine MLAs who were sworn in as Ministers in the Shinde-Fadnavis government.
Since then, the Ajit Pawar-led rebel faction has staked claim to the party name and symbol before the Election Commission (EC) while Mr. Ajit Pawar has claimed to be the new party president of the NCP.
Last week, in its response to the rebel faction’s claims, the Sharad Pawar group told the EC that there existed no split within the party except for “a few mischievous individuals, who for their personal ambitions, have defected from the party”.
Interestingly, ever since the schism within the NCP, both rival factions have claimed there was no split within the party.
On July 7, days after the split, the Ajit Pawar group claimed that the party had held a meeting on June 30 with many MLAs and MLCs at ‘Devgiri’ [Mr. Ajit Pawar’s Mumbai residence].
Rajya Sabha MP and former Union Minister Praful Patel, a key member of the Ajit Pawar-led faction, had said that in the June 30 meeting, Ajit Pawar had been “unanimously elected” as NCP president and that on the same day, the faction had given a petition to the EC in Delhi, along with affidavits of more than 40 NCP MLAs, informing the Commission about Mr. Ajit Pawar’s elevation and staking claim to the party name and symbol.
In its response submitted to the EC last week, the Sharad Pawar-led group said that Mr. Ajit Pawar’s appointment as NCP president was “illegal” and that his actions contravened the party’s internal constitution as he had “unilaterally sought to appoint himself as the party boss on the basis of signatures of some legislators”.
