New Delhi, Sept. 17 -- The Supreme Court on Thursday questioned whether the Election Commission adequately considered the possibility of denying the reserved bow-and-arrow symbol to both the Eknath Shinde and the Uddhav Thackeray factions of the Shiv Sena and asking them to contest elections on separate symbols.

A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana resumed hearing petitions challenging the Election Commission's decision recognising the Shinde-led faction as the real Shiv Sena and allotting it the party's bow-and-arrow election symbol.

Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for the Shinde faction, said that the legislative majority test adopted by the EC was legally valid and appropriate to the circumstances of the dispute.

During the hearing, Justice Bagchi said the pendency of disqualification proceedings against the MLAs of the Shinde faction, when the decision with regard to whom Shiv Sena party and its symbol belong was being taken, cannot be "brushed aside".

"Although finally, as you rightly said, the consequence (of decision on disqualification proceedings) no longer exists. But a declaration can also be made in respect of whether the (EC's) order was correct or not. A relief in the nature of a declaration is maintainable," Justice Bagchi told Kaul.

On Wednesday, Justice Bagchi questioned whether a legislative majority could be considered a "safe test" to determine the ownership of a political party, particularly when disqualification proceedings were pending against the very MLAs who constituted that majority.

Kaul said 40 MLAs of the Shinde faction had secured 76 per cent of the votes polled in favour of the 55 winning Shiv Sena MLAs in the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections.

In contrast, the 15 MLAs supporting Thackeray had secured 23.5 per cent of those votes, he said.

Referring to the total votes polled by Sena candidates in the 2019 Assembly elections, including losing candidates, Kaul said the 40 MLAs supporting the respondents accounted for approximately 40 per cent of the party's total votes, while the 15 MLAs supporting the petitioners accounted for 12 per cent.

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