The Ajit Pawar faction has filed a caveat in Supreme Court, seeking a hearing if Sharad Pawar group challenges the Election Commission order of declaring the former as the real Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
In a setback to NCP founder Sharad Pawar, the Election Commission recognised the faction led by his nephew Ajit Pawar as the real Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and also allotted the party's poll symbol 'Clock' to the Ajit Pawar group.
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The decision followed the laid-out tests of maintainability of such a petition which included tests of aims and objectives of party constitution, test of party constitution and tests of majority both organisational and legislative, the Election Commission said.
Ajit Pawar had walked away with a majority of NCP MLAs in July last year and supported the BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in Maharashtra.
Ajit Pawar had submitted the petition with the EC two days before he and eight other MLAs took oath as ministers in the Shinde government.
While the Sharad Pawar faction termed the EC's decision as murder of democracy, the Ajit faction said in a democracy, priority is given to the majority.
"This is the murder of democracy. What happened is unfortunate," Anil Deshmukh, leader of the Sharad Pawar group, said.
"In a democracy, priority is given to the majority which is why the poll commission has allotted the party name and symbol to us," Ajit Pawar said.
In a similar matter, Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar in January announced his verdict on the cross-petitions by Shiv Sena factions seeking disqualification of each other's MLAs and gave Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his camp the tag of the "real political party".
Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narwekar delivered the verdict on January 10 on the disqualification petitions against Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and several MLAs whose rebellion had split the Shiv Sena in June 2022.
In his 105-minute-long reading of the key points of the much-awaited ruling on the cross-petitions, Narwekar rejected the Uddhav Thackeray faction’s petition to disqualify 16 MLAs of the ruling group, including Shinde, and also did not disqualify anyone from the Uddhav camp.
