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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.)

Poison in the Pipes

Correspondent
Dec 31, 2025
3 min read

Indore’s carefully polished image as ‘India’s cleanest city’ has been punctured by a lethal incident of contaminated water killing its residents.

Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh

For years, Indore has been paraded as an urban success story. It has topped the Swachh Survekshan rankings with numbing regularity while its cleanliness has been showcased primarily as a matter of sweeping streets and polishing reputations. Yet in Bhagirathpura this week, beneath the bunting of civic pride, at least seven people died and more than a hundred were hospitalised after drinking what was meant to be safe municipal water. A city that congratulates itself for spotless roads could not keep sewage out of its pipes.


The facts are grim enough without embellishment. Residents complained for days that their tap water smelled foul and tasted bitter. Vomiting and diarrhoea followed as the elderly collapsed and citizens began dying en route to hospital. Only after bodies began to pile up did the machinery of the state whir into action by surveying thousands of households and sending water samples sent for testing. Initial assessments suggest that drainage water may have mixed with the drinking supply, possibly through a leaking pipeline over which a toilet had been constructed. In a city that claims to lead the nation in sanitation, human waste appears to have flowed straight into kitchen taps.


The political response has followed a depressingly familiar script. Suspensions were announced as though contamination were the result of a few errant underlings rather than systemic rot.


This tragedy cuts deeper because Indore’s reputation is central to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s urban narrative in Madhya Pradesh. The city is held up as proof that the BJP’s ‘triple-engine government’ - municipal, state and centre aligned - delivers results. Cleanliness rankings have been weaponised as political capital, deployed in campaigns and speeches as evidence of administrative competence. But the rankings only reward visible order like segregated waste, tidy intersections, well-curated public toilets. They do not measure the integrity of underground pipes laid decades ago, nor the institutional indifference that allows sewage and drinking water to mingle.


The opposition Congress has predictably pounced, demanding cases of culpable homicide against the mayor and municipal commissioner. Some of its rhetoric veers into opportunism. Yet it is hard to dismiss the core charge that residents’ complaints were ignored. In a functioning city, foul-smelling water ought to trigger serious alarm. In Indore, it regrettably took several deaths to force attention.


This is not merely a local lapse but one that is emblematic of India’s urban malaise. Cities obsess over branding while neglecting plumbing. Flyovers and facades win votes while invisible infrastructure does not. Water systems remain fragile, poorly monitored and riddled with informal modifications. The mixing of sewage and drinking water is not a freak accident but a known risk, especially in dense settlements where pipes are old and oversight is lax. That it occurred in Indore - a model city - should unsettle every urban administrator in the country.


There is also a deeper moral hazard at play. Awards create incentives to game the visible metrics while ignoring the essentials. A city can be ‘clean’ and still be unsafe. A government can win plaudits and still preside over preventable deaths.


The deaths in Bhagirathpura should force a reckoning beyond suspensions and compensation. Who approved a toilet over a main water pipeline? Why were complaints not escalated? How many other neighbourhoods drink from similarly compromised systems? And why does responsibility always stop short of political heads, even when civic failure is structural?


Indore’s tragedy is not that it fell short of perfection. It is that it mistook appearances for outcomes. One must give credit to the city’s authorities for helping it achieve the moniker of the cleanest city. Yet, while clean streets are commendable, clean water is non-negotiable. Until Indian cities learn the difference and until political leaders are held accountable not for rankings but for results, the poison will always remain out of sight and in the pipes. 

 


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