The Court’s order came on a plea by the Uddhav Thackeray faction against Election Commission of India (ECI) order recognising Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena and granting permission to them to use the name ‘Shiv Sena’ and the bow and arrow symbol for their party.
The case has its genesis in the split of the Shiv Sena political party into two factions, one led by Thackeray and the other by Shinde, who went on to replace Thackeray as Maharashtra’s Chief Minister after the split in June 2022.
Shinde had then petitioned the ECI staking claim to the ‘Shiv Sena’ name and the bow and arrow symbol.
The ECI relied upon the strength of the legislative wing of the party to arrive at its decision instead of the relying on test of organisational wing.
This, the ECI said, was because though it attempted to apply the test of organisational wing, it could not come to any satisfactory conclusion because the latest Constitution of the party was not on record.
The respective claims of numerical majority in organisational wing by both factions is not satisfactory, the ECI had underlined.
Hence, it had proceeded to rely on the test of majority in the legislative wing.
The Shinde faction was noted to have 40 MLAs as against the Thackeray faction’s 15 MLAs in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.
Likewise, in the Lok Sabha too, out of 18 Members of Parliament, 13 were in support of Shinde faction, while only 5 were in support of Thackeray faction.
Hence, based on the above, the ECI had ruled in favour of Shinde faction and allowed it to retain Shiv Sena name and the bow and arrow symbol.
Source: Barandbench
