Eknath Shinde will continue as the chief minister of Maharashtra, according to a Supreme Court ruling on Thursday. The court decided that Uddhav Thackeray could not be restored to his position as leader of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, as he resigned without facing a floor test in June 2022. The court criticised former Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari for lacking objective reasons in his conclusion that Thackeray had lost the confidence of the House.
The court ruled on a number of petitions related to the political crisis that led to the downfall of the MVA government, after the Shinde faction in the Shiv Sena revolted. In a unanimous verdict, the bench stated that the speaker’s decision to appoint Bharat Gogawale of the Shinde faction as the whip of the Shiv Sena in the Maharashtra Assembly was “contrary to law”.
The court said that the governor was not justified in calling for a floor test, as he did not have objective material on which to doubt the confidence of the incumbent government. The resolution on which the governor relied did not indicate that MLAs wished to exit from the MVA government. The court added that once a government is democratically elected, there is a presumption that it enjoys the confidence of the House, and there must exist some objective material to dislodge this presumption.
The MLAs did not express their desire to withdraw support from the MVA government in a resolution dated June 21, 2022. Even if they had implied their intention to exit from the government, they only constituted a faction of the Shiv Sena Legislature Party and were indicating their dissatisfaction with their party’s course of action.
The five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud comprised Justices M R Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli and P S Narasimha.
