The Bombay High Court will hear Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena’s plea for directions to the municipal authorities to consider their applications for holding their annual Dussehra rally at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park on October 5 amid a power struggle with chief minister Eknath Shinde’s camp.
The rally is expected to be Thackeray’s first show of strength in Mumbai since he was forced to resign as chief minister in June after Shinde-led lawmakers rebelled against him and formed the government with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Shiv Sena has not formally split. The Shinde faction is supported by the majority of the party’s legislators, who claim to be the true Shiv Sena.
Both camps have asked for permission to hold the rally. Shinde has been accused by the Thackeray camp of putting pressure on the municipal authorities.
The high court will hear the petition just days before a five-judge Supreme Court constitution bench is scheduled to hear Shinde’s petition to let the Election Commission of India decide his claim over the “real” Shiv Sena and the party symbol on September 27. The Thackeray camp has sought total estoppel from the proceedings before the poll watchdog.
The Thackeray faction’s plea for a hearing was posted by the high court after its secretary, Anil Desai, mentioned it for an urgent listing on Wednesday. According to the petition, the Shiv Sena has held the rally at Shivaji Park since its inception in 1966, and the party’s supporters attend without a formal invitation.
According to the Thackeray faction, they applied for permission to hold the rally on August 22 and 26, but the civic authorities have yet to grant it. It requested that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) grant the permit within three days.
Advocate Joel Carlos, representing the Thackeray faction, told a division bench of justices R D Dhanuka and Kamal Khata that the BMC has no reason not to grant the permission and that the petition should be heard urgently.
