Thackeray can't be restored as CM: SC

New Delhi: Eknath Shinde will continue as the chief minister of Maharashtra, with the Supreme Court holding on Thursday that it cannot restore the then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Uddhav Thackeray as he resigned without facing a floor test in June last year. The court also pulled up former Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari and said he did not have reasons based on objective material before him to arrive at the conclusion that then chief minister Thackeray had lost the confidence of the House.

In a unanimous verdict on a batch of pleas related to the political crisis that led to the fall of the three-party MVA government following a revolt by the Shinde faction in the Shiv Sena, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud held that the then 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 bench said, “The governor was not justified in calling upon Mr Thackeray to prove his majority on the floor of the House because he did not have reasons based on objective material before him to reach the conclusion that Mr Thackeray had lost the confidence of the House. However, the status quo ante cannot be restored because Mr Thackeray did not face the floor test and tendered his resignation.”

The bench, also comprising Justices M R Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli and P S Narasimha, said, “The governor had no objective material on the basis of which he could doubt the confidence of the incumbent government. The resolution on which the governor relied did not contain any indication that the MLAs wished to exit from the MVA government. The communication expressing discontent on the part of some MLAs is not sufficient for the governor to call for a floor test.”

It added that the governor ought to apply his mind to the communication (or any other material) before him to assess whether a government has lost the confidence of the House. “We use the term ‘opinion’ to mean satisfaction based on objective criteria as to whether he possessed relevant material, and not to mean the subjective satisfaction of the governor. Once a government is democratically elected in accordance with law, there is a presumption that it enjoys the confidence of the House. There must exist some objective material to dislodge this presumption,” the court said.

It added that the MLAs did not express their desire to withdraw support from the MVA government in the resolution dated June 21, 2022 and even if it is assumed that they had implied that they intended to exit from the government, they only constituted a faction of the Shiv Sena Legislature Party (SSLP) and were, at the most, indicating their dissatisfaction with the course of action adopted by their party.