Bombay High Court rejects PIL against Shinde government's withdrawal of 12 Maha Vikas Aghadi MLC nominations

The Bombay High Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the September 2022 decision of the government led by the Eknath Shinde to withdraw 12 nominations for Members of Legislative Council (MLC) recommended by the earlier Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government helmed by Uddhav Thackerey..A Bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Atul Borkar said that the petition was 'misconceived' and 'liable to be dismissed'..The Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government had recommended a list of 12 names to the Governor as MLCs in November 2020. Subsequently, a petition came to be filed in the High Court in 2020 seeking directions to the Governor to decide on the same. The High Court held last year that it is the Governor’s constitutional duty to accept or return names within a reasonable time.A year later, after a political upheaval, the State government changed and Eknath Shinde took over as the new Chief Minister of the State.The new cabinet reportedly wrote to the Governor that they were withdrawing the pending list of 12 names submitted by the earlier government. The Governor accepted the same on September 5, 2022, and his office returned the list back to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO).This was challenged by Sunil Modi, Area Head of Kolhapur Municipal Corporation, who is part of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) faction.Modi raised grievance against the Governor's refusal to act on nominations made to the Legislative Council of Maharashtra for an inordinately long period of 1 year and 10 months.Further, Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan recently approved a new list of seven MLCs just before the announcement of the Maharashtra Assembly elections. This move led to fresh legal challenges by Modi, who argued that the Governor could not have approved these names while the court's judgment was pending.Senior Advocate Anil Anturkar, appearing for Modi, argued before the High Court that the Governor ought to have paid heed to the division bench judgment of the High Court. “This is the case where authority is sitting tight on it for 8 months. The Court said that this is a matter where some decision is required, in a polite manner. Something which is said by the Court was not respected. That would not be proper. The division bench asked the governor to speak his mind,” Anturkar said. .Advocate General (AG) Dr Birendra Saraf opposed the petition on the ground of maintainability. His point of contention was that there was no embargo on a cabinet to recommend or withdraw recommendations. “Today there is no recommendation before the Governor. Petitioner today cannot say that ‘recommendation is made it should continue forever’. It is not his case that the Governor should have decided earlier,” the AG argued. He added that the Governor returned the recommendation file as there was no other recommendation pending after withdrawal.