The judgment by the five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, pertaining to political developments in Maharashtra, has neither provided any definitive closure nor resolved the vexed questions emerging out of these developments. Although the judgment does point at several key actors and their actions that contributed to the change of guard in the state government, it upholds the change itself to be legally valid. The judgment chastises the then governor for calling a session of the assembly to hold a confidence motion when he had no objective material to deem that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had lost the confidence of the house. The judgment also says that it was illegal to deem the legislature party and not political party as the appropriate authority to appoint a new whip by the defectors. However, it leaves the matter of the disqualification of 16 members of legislative assembly (MLAs) to that very speaker whose election to that post could not have been possible without the unconstitutionally called session and recognition of the illegally appointed whip. Such an approach filled with lapses has adverse implications for the 10th schedule and could in effect destabilise the party system itself.
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