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By:

Abhijit Joshi

31 August 2024 at 3:39:24 pm

Battle for the Bow and Arrow

The Shiv Sena dispute before the Supreme Court is no longer just about MLAs and symbols, but about what legally defines a political party. AI generated image The fight over the Shiv Sena has moved well beyond Maharashtra’s familiar political theatre. In the Supreme Court, the dispute has narrowed to a question that is less dramatic on the surface but potentially far more consequential: what exactly makes a political party a political party? Is it the elected strength of its legislators? The...

Battle for the Bow and Arrow

The Shiv Sena dispute before the Supreme Court is no longer just about MLAs and symbols, but about what legally defines a political party. AI generated image The fight over the Shiv Sena has moved well beyond Maharashtra’s familiar political theatre. In the Supreme Court, the dispute has narrowed to a question that is less dramatic on the surface but potentially far more consequential: what exactly makes a political party a political party? Is it the elected strength of its legislators? The organisation outside the legislature? The party constitution on record with the Election Commission? Or some combination of all three? That question lies at the centre of the legal battle between the factions led by Eknath Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray. Two Claims Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for the Shinde faction, has defended the Election Commission’s February 17, 2023 decision, recognising the Shinde camp as the Shiv Sena and allotting it the bow-and-arrow symbol. The Thackeray faction has challenged that decision. The bench is also dealing with challenges connected to the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker’s January 2024 decision on disqualification petitions. The Thackeray faction, represented by senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Devadatt Kamat, has drawn a sharp distinction between the political party and its legislature wing. Its argument is a group of MLAs breaking away from the legislative wing does not automatically mean that the political party itself has changed hands. The party’s organisation, structure and identity cannot simply be equated with the numbers sitting in the Assembly. The Shinde faction says the dispute was never merely about legislators walking out. According to its argument, the rupture extended into the wider political organisation, with competing meetings, resolutions and claims of support from party workers and functionaries. The legislative split was, in its telling, only one visible part of a larger party-wide conflict. That distinction determines whether the Election Commission could legitimately intervene under Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols Order and decide which rival faction represented the recognised political party. Kaul has argued that the Commission was entitled to consider the wider organisational dispute rather than treating the matter as a purely legislative rebellion. Constitutional Tussle The courtroom fight has also brought an old Shiv Sena document back into the spotlight. Kaul has relied heavily on the constitution placed on record with the Election Commission after the poll panel raised objections to the party’s earlier structure. The material before the court says the Commission had, in the late 1990s, pushed for a more democratic organisational structure, including changes to the manner in which party office-bearers were selected. The 1999 constitution subsequently went on record. The Shinde side says the 2018 constitution represented a significant departure from that structure. Its argument is that the later arrangement concentrated substantial authority in the party chief and relied extensively on nominated or appointed office-bearers rather than elected organisational bodies. It has also questioned why its leaders participated in the organisational structure created under the 2018 arrangement and did not object to it at the time. Kaul has further argued that the 2018 constitution relied upon by the Thackeray faction was not registered with the Election Commission, while the 1999 constitution was on the Commission’s record. This has become a significant element of the Shinde faction’s case. The Thackeray faction, meanwhile, has relied on the Supreme Court’s earlier Constitution Bench judgment in the Subhash Desai matter to reinforce the distinction between a political party and its legislature party. The earlier judgment’s discussion about not conflating the political party with its legislature wing arose in the context of questions such as who could appoint the whip. It did not, according to the Shinde side, mean that the Election Commission must ignore legislative strength altogether when determining which faction represents a recognised political party. The Shinde side has also invoked the Sadiq Ali case, arguing that legislative majority remains a relevant consideration in a party-symbol dispute. The case has therefore increasingly begun to look like a legal examination of the Election Commission’s decision-making process. The Thackeray faction has questioned the Commission’s jurisdiction and the basis on which it concluded that there was a party-wide split. Its challenge effectively asks whether the Commission went too far in examining the internal structure of the Shiv Sena. The Shinde faction argues that Article 324 gives the Election Commission broad powers and that, when two groups claim the same recognised party, the Commission has to examine the party constitution, organisational structure and available evidence to identify which group represents the party. The practical difficulty is obvious. The Election Commission cannot ask every Shiv Sena member whom they support. Nor can it conduct a referendum among every booth-level worker. Kaul has therefore defended the organisational-majority approach as a workable method of assessing cadre support through recognised organisational bodies and elected representatives. The Shinde camp has also brought the events after the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election into the argument. Shiv Sena and BJP fought the election together, but the government subsequently formed under Uddhav Thackeray was with Congress and NCP. According to the Shinde side, that political realignment created discontent among sections of the Shiv Sena organisation and contributed to the eventual split. The Thackeray faction disputes the broader narrative and maintains that the legislative rebellion cannot simply be converted into proof that the political party itself changed hands. It has also challenged the Maharashtra Speaker’s decision not to disqualify MLAs from either faction. The Supreme Court has examined questions about what could follow if that decision were set aside, including whether consequential disqualification could arise under the Tenth Schedule. Party recognition and legislative disqualification arise under different legal frameworks. The Shinde side has argued that earlier cases concerning disqualification cannot simply be transplanted into the Election Commission’s determination under the Symbols Order. The real question is no longer simply who has more MLAs. It is whether those MLAs, the party organisation, the constitution and the cadre can legally be treated as parts of the same answer. (The writer is a political observer. Views personal.)

Lotus at Maghi

Correspondent
Jan 15
3 min read

A Sikh martyrdom fair in Muktsar has become the unlikely battleground for Punjab’s next political realignment.

Punjab
Punjab

The Maghi Mela at Sri Muktsar Sahib has never been a quiet affair. Every January, tens of thousands of Sikhs gather on the sacred ground where the Forty ‘Muktas,’ or warriors who returned to fight and die for Guru Gobind Singh in 1705, won spiritual liberation through sacrifice. The mela has always been heavily steeped in politics. For decades it has served as Punjab’s most unforgiving Panthak court, a place where governments are judged not just on their balance-sheets but on their fidelity to Sikh sentiment, history and honour. This time, it felt like a rehearsal for the 2027 assembly election.


What made this Maghi different was not merely the noise but the new choreography. For the first time, the Bharatiya Janata Party organised a full-fledged political conference at the mela. The Aam Aadmi Party, which used this very platform in 2016 to announce its arrival as Punjab’s insurgent force, returned after nearly a decade in power. Meanwhile, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the traditional custodian of Panthak politics, struggled to reclaim relevance. The Congress stayed away, citing an Akal Takht directive against political grandstanding on religious occasions – a move that betrayed political exhaustion.


Punjab today is weary of drugs that have hollowed out a generation, of gangsterism that mocks the rule of law, of corruption that has merely changed hands since the 2022 election. The AAP had come to power promising clean governance and dignity for farmers. Four years on, even its own critics no longer need to exaggerate. The Rs. 1,000-a-month stipend for women has vanished into the ether. Farm incomes remain hostage to uncertain procurement and delayed payments. The state’s debt has swollen.


It was this sense of drift that the BJP sought to exploit at Muktsar. Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu accused the AAP government of brazenly misusing state machinery while Sunil Jakhar, the BJP’s state president, struck a more strategic note, portraying AAP as a subcontractor of Delhi and the Congress as a house divided by corruption and identity politics. Nayab Singh Saini, Haryana’s BJP Chief Minister, offered a neighbour’s contrast: in BJP-ruled Haryana, he said, farmers receive minimum support prices, compensation for crop losses and timely payments that aren’t happening in Punjab.


There was also an unmistakable attempt to wrap this critique in Sikh history. The Forty Muktas and Mai Bhago were invoked not as museum pieces but as symbols of moral courage. Whether the BJP’s charges against the AAP stick is less important than the terrain they seek to occupy. In a state where political legitimacy is filtered through faith and memory, the AAP’s Delhi-first image leaves it exposed.


The Akali Dal, for its part, tried to remind Punjabis of AAP’s broken promises and alleged extravagance—thousands of crores spent on advertising, chartered planes for leaders, recruits parachuted in from outside the state. Yet its own long years in power, tainted by the same allegations of drugs, sacrilege and cronyism that now dog AAP, have dulled its edge. The Panthak vote is no longer the Akalis’ private estate.


Until recently, the BJP was a marginal force in Punjab, shackled to the Akalis and mistrusted by a Sikh electorate wary of majoritarian politics. But the split with the SAD in 2020 and the central government’s overtures have given it a chance to reintroduce itself. By staking a claim at Maghi, the BJP signalled that it wants to be the pole around which a new coalition might form.


Punjab’s politics is fragmenting as the AAP’s sheen has faded, the Akalis are diminished and the Congress is listless. In such a landscape, a party that can offer administrative competence, financial muscle from the centre and a credible respect for Sikh institutions stands to gain.


The Maghi Mela has always been about redemption after failure. Punjab, too, is searching for a way out of its present malaise. By choosing Muktsar as its stage, the BJP is betting that the road to power in 2027 runs through both Delhi and the Panth.

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