Eknath Shinde continues to be Maha CM; ‘moral victory’ for Uddhav as SC slams governor’s ‘illegal trust vote’

New Delhi, May 11: The Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment, effectively opened the doors for the disqualification of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde for defection from the Shiv Sena party while holding that the then Governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari’s call for trust vote, which led to the resignation of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government, was illegal.

A Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, however, said it cannot quash the resignation of Thackeray, and thus, would not be able to reinstate him as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, now.

“Thackeray did not face the floor test. Instead, he had resigned. If Thackeray had refrained from resignation, he could have been reinstated. Since the trust vote was not held due to his resignation, this option does not arise. We cannot quash a resignation,” the court held.

On June 29 last year, Thackeray resigned as the Chief Minister and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government fell hours after the apex court refused to stay a floor test called for by Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari on June 30. Following this, the Governor Koshyari had invited Shinde to form the new government.

The judgment, authored by the Chief Justice Chandrachud, held that the Election Commission of India’s decision to recognise the Shinde faction as the “real” Shiv Sena, giving it the party symbol of ‘bow and arrow’, did not have a “retrospective” effect and amounted to an interference with the party’s 2018 Constitution and results of the intra-party polls, following which Thackeray was made a leader.

The court said Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar should not have kept the disqualification petitions against Shinde and other MLAs of his camp pending until the Election Commission gave its decision in its favour. The then Deputy Speaker Narhari Zariwal had issued disqualification notices against 39 MLAs, including Shinde, for defection on June 25, 2022.

The court said Shinde did not have the defence of ‘split’ available to him. A “split” from the original political party without a subsequent merger with another party or formation of a new faction is no longer a defence against charges of defection. The Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003 had deleted the provision of “split” in Paragraph 3 of the Tenth Schedule. The judgment backs the contention raised by the Thackeray faction that the Shinde camp’s refusal to comply with the party whip amounted to a “split” from the original Shiv Sena party. As a result, they had ceased to be party members and were liable to be disqualified as legislators for defection.

Though the Shinde government would continue for the time being, the Supreme Court judgment would gravely impact the Chief Minister’s sole defence that he had only “split” and not defected from the Shiv Sena party. The Constitution Bench also found the appointment of Bharat Gogawale as the new chief whip of Shiv Sena.

The judgment made scathing remarks against Governor Koshiyari, saying he roamed out of the constitutional bounds of his office into the political arena by calling for a trust vote without any “objective material” to support his “inference” that the MVA government had lost the majority and confidence in the House.

Chief Justice Chandrachud said there was nothing in the communications sent by the rebel Shiv Sena MLAs to him that they were withdrawing support to the Thackeray government. In fact, many of them were Ministers in that regime.

“Floor test cannot be used as a means to settle differences within a political party… The Governor erred in concluding that Thackeray had lost support,” Chief Justice Chandrachud lashed out at the Governor.

The court said if the MLAs were unhappy about the “corruption” in the government, either they or then Opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis could have sought a no-confidence motion in the House, which they had not, instead of writing to the Governor. “There is a marked difference between individuals withdrawing from a government and a party withdrawing from the government,” Chief Justice Chandrachud noted.

The court further referred to a larger Bench of seven judges the question whether a Speaker under a cloud can proceed with hearing and deciding disqualification petitions against MLAs. A Constitution Bench judgment in 2016 in the Nabam Rebia case had held that a Speaker who is himself facing notice of disqualification should stop from hearing petitions under the Tenth Schedule. Shinde had countered Zariwal’s disqualification notice by filing a notice of disqualification against the Deputy Speaker. Thackeray had contended that the 2016 judgment opened a constitutional hiatus by which the Speaker cannot use his powers to disqualify MLAs, thus rendering the Tenth Schedule redundant.

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Israeli forces invade southwestern Syria, set up checkpoint in Quneitra

News Network

November 24,2025

Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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