The Shiv Sena political party had split into two factions last year, one led by Thackeray and the other by Shinde, who went on to replace Thackeray as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister in June 2022.
Shinde had then petitioned the ECI staking a claim to the ‘Shiv Sena’ name and the bow and arrow symbol.
The ECI then relied on the strength of the legislative wing of the party to arrive at its decision rather than on the test of its organisational wing.
The ECI explained that although it had attempted to apply the test of the organisational wing, it could not come to any satisfactory conclusion because the latest Constitution of the party was not on record.
The claims of numerical majority in the organisational wing of the party by both factions were not satisfactory, the ECI opined.
Hence, it proceeded to rely on the test of who had the majority in the legislative wing.
The Shinde faction was noted to have 40 MLAs in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly as against the Thackeray faction’s 15 MLAs.
Likewise, in the Lok Sabha as well, out of 18 Members of Parliament (MPs), 13 MPs supported the Shinde faction, while only 5 supported the Thackeray faction.
Hence, the ECI ruled in favour of the Shinde faction and allowed it to retain Shiv Sena name and the bow and arrow symbol.
The Uddhav faction then moved the top court against the same.
Source: Barandbench
