The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar for delaying the decision on the disqualification petitions against Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Shiv Sena MLAs supporting him, Live Law reported.

Nationalist Congress Party leader Narhari Zirwal, who was the deputy speaker in June 2022, had initiated

The disqualification proceedings against them were started in June 2022 by Nationalist Congress Party leader Narhari Zirwal, who was the deputy speaker at that time, after they rebelled and triggered the fall of Uddhav Thackeray’s Maha Vikas Aghadi government.

Shinde and the 15 MLAs in his camp filed separate petitions challenging the disqualification notices that Zirwal had sent to them. Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sunil Prabhu then filed an interlocutory application seeking quick disposal of the cases.

On May 11, a five-judge bench directed the Maharashtra Speaker to hear and decide the disqualification petitions within a “reasonable time”.

On September 18, the Supreme Court asked him to spell out the timeline for adjudication of the petitions.

At Friday’s hearing, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the Thackeray faction, informed a bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud that Narwekar had framed a hearing schedule for one year.

The chief justice said a decision on the matter must be taken before the next Assembly elections or the process will become infructuous.

“He cannot defeat the orders of the Supreme Court,” Justice Chandrachud told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. “What kind of time schedule he is prescribing? This is a summary procedure. Last time, we thought better sense will prevail and asked him to lay down a schedule. The idea of laying down the schedule was not to indefinitely delay the hearing.”

Visibly irked, the chief justice said that the case “cannot become a charade”, Live Law reported.

“We issued notice on 14 July,” he remarked verbally. “Thereafter we passed an order in September. Now seeing that the Speaker has not taken any steps, we are constrained to say he must take a decision in two months.”

The bench adjourned the hearing till October 17 and asked Narwekar to submit a revised schedule expediting the process.

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