SC to hear Pawar’s plea against poll panel order on ‘real’ NCP today

New Delhi, February 18

The Supreme Court (SC) will on Monday hear veteran Maharashtra politician Sharad Pawar’s petition challenging the Election Commission’s February 6, 2023, order recognising the Ajit Pawar-led faction as the real Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Pawar’s petition is listed before a Bench led by Justice Surya Kant, which will take the matter on February 19.

The top court had on February 16 agreed to urgently list his petition after Pawar submitted that a whip may be issued by the NCP faction led by Ajit Pawar, the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Pawar, who founded the NCP with former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Sangma and Tariq Anwar in 1999 after being expelled from the Congress, filed the petition on Monday. The Ajit Pawar faction has already filed a caveat to ensure that no order was passed in favour of the Sharad group without hearing it.

Ajit had walked away with a majority of NCP MLAs in July 2023 and supported the BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Eknath Shinde.

The Election Commission had on February 6 declared that the Ajit Pawar faction was the real NCP and allotted the NCP’s election symbol ‘clock’ to the Ajit Pawar faction of NCP. The EC considered the support enjoyed by each claimant in the party’s organisational and legislative wings in case of a split, besides examining its constitution and the list of office-bearers that was submitted to it when the party was united before allotting the election symbol.