New Delhi, March 7 -- The Supreme Court on Thursday questioned the use of "legislative majority" test by Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar while deciding that Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction was the real Shiv Sena, and summoned the original records relating to the disqualification row from the speaker's office.

Hearing a plea of the Uddhav Thackeray faction against the speaker's order declaring the Shinde bloc as the "real political party" after the split in the Shiv Sena in June 2022, the top court also took note of the claim of senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the group led by the chief minister, about "forgery" in some relevant documents.

"The original records shall be summoned from the office of the adjudicating authority (speaker)," said the bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, and fixed the Thackeray faction's plea for hearing on April 8.

The bench said it was keeping open the issue of maintainability of the petition of the Thackeray faction.

The top court, which had issued notice on the Thackeray group's petition on January 22, asked Shinde and his MLAs to file a response positively on or before April 1.

The speaker had, in an order on January 10, declared the Shiv Sena bloc led by Shinde as the "real political party" after the split in June 2022.

He had also rejected the Thackeray faction's plea to disqualify 16 MLAs of the ruling camp, including Shinde.

The bench took note of the submissions of senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the Thackeray group, that there was a distinction between "legislative majority and organisational majority" post defection.

The senior lawyer said there was a judgement which held that legislative majority post defection would not necessarily mean real majority.

Questioning the use of test of "legislative majority" to ascertain which faction was the real party, the CJI referred to the order of the speaker and said, "Is this not contrary to the judgment? The whole submission is contrary to the judgment of our court".

"See para... the speaker said which faction is the real political party' is discernible from the legislative majority which existed when the rival factions emerged'. Is it not contrary to the judgment?" the

CJI asked.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.