Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said on Friday that the government in the state has been formed legally and has majority support, PTI reported.
Shinde made the comments shortly after the Supreme Court said it will decide on a case related to the political crisis that took place in the state in June after hearing arguments on the merits of the matter.
“We trust the judiciary,” the chief minister said on the court’s decision. “We expect a verdict based on merit. We are a majority government formed legally.”
Shinde claimed that the Opposition wanted to refer the matter to a larger bench in order to prolong the case.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut said his party believes that truth will prevail and the Supreme Court will deliver justice. “Governments and political parties cannot be destabilised through use of power and money,” he said, according to PTI. “We want a clean political system.”
The case at hand on Friday was a dispute on whether the 2016 Nabam Rebia judgement of the Supreme Court should be referred to a larger bench. In the judgement, the Supreme Court had held that Nabam Rebia, who was then the Arunachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker, was ineligible to decide on disqualification petitions till the motion seeking his removal was completed.
The Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena had cited the verdict to argue that the Maharashtra Deputy Speaker could not deal with a plea for disqualification of dissident MLAs while a notice seeking his removal was pending, according to Live Law.
On June 27, a vacation bench of the Supreme Court had extended the time for MLAs from Shinde’s faction to respond to a disqualification notice till July 12. On the next day, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, who was the governor at the time, had asked former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to seek a trust vote on June 30.
On June 29, the Supreme Court had refused to order a stay on the trust vote, after which Thackeray resigned as the chief minister.
Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister of Maharashtra on June 30, while the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Devendra Fadnavis took oath as his deputy. On July 4, Shinde won a floor test in the Maharashtra Assembly. He got 164 votes in his support, significantly above the majority mark of 145, while 99 MLAs voted against him.
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