Maharashtra assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Tuesday said his office would approach the Election Commission of India to get the rules laid down by it which govern the constitution of political parties. This would help him in deciding the issue of disqualification of MLAs and to decide which factions of the Shiv Sena’s whip would be applicable to the Shiv Sena MLAs, Narwekar said.

“Once we get the details from the EC…whether the elections (intra party elections) have been held or not, whether the party has been running as per the norms of the Election Commission or as per the party’s constitution, we will study all this and give a decision,” the Speaker said at a press conference in Mumbai.

“While arriving at the decision, we would also look into the rules of disqualification, constitution, the Supreme Court guidelines and then give a ruling,” he added.

Narwekar’s proposed move to study the Sena constitution to check whether it is as per EC rules is very significant and has caused a flutter in the Uddhav Thackeray camp.

This is especially so since the Election Commission had earlier ruled that Shiv Sena’s constitution, that was amended in 2018, was ‘undemocratic’.

The EC had ruled that the amendments were wrong as the “party constitution envisaged the party president (Uddhav) to nominate the electoral college that was to elect him”. The EC had then ruled that since the Shinde group had the legislative majority, it gave the Shiv Sena name and party symbol to the Eknath Shinde faction.

Referring to the Uddhav group’s claim that the Supreme Court had asked the Speaker to take the decision within a “reasonable” amount of time and the party asking the Speaker to take the decision within 15 days or a maximum of three months, Narwekar said that he would like to give a ruling as soon as possible but said that the issue would take some time.