Sena may find itself in trouble with EC

According to both Uddhav Thackeray, son of Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, and Subhash Desai, the party general secretary, an election is unnecessary because the party “constitution” has vested all powers in its chief Bal Thackeray for his lifetime. “We have conveyed this to the Election Commission and “our people (party MPs in New Delhi) are now discussing the issue with the Chief Election Commissioner,” Desai told The Indian Express.

However, Desai was unable to procure for this newspaper a copy of the Sena constitution whose “one original”, he says, has been sent to the Nirvachan Sadan in New Delhi. “I have searched but I cannot find another copy,” he said. “But we have sent some original papers to the EC.”

Election Commissioner G V G Krishnamurty, in a cryptic comment on the party’s stand says,“We are examining the response of the Sena.”

However, the Sena might not get away as easily with its advocacy of a lifetime leadership for Thackeray. Says Krishnamurthy,“The question that arises in a democracy is: can a party have a lifetime chairman? The EC is examining this issue and should reach a conclusion within the next few weeks.”

But, he said, the EC’s deadline of June 15 applied to all parties equally, except if the party constitution specified a time period like two or four years for each term of the office-bearers. In that case, “the deadline would apply if the two or four years were up. Then the office-bearers would cease to have legitimacy or any authority after the expiry of that period,” he said.

Meanwhile, estranged Shiv Sena leader Madhav Deshpande seems determined to tear apart yet another flank of the party. Following a writ petition in the Bombay High Court challenging the legitimacy of the Sena as a political party, he has now moved the EC for derecognition of the party for its failure to satisfy constitutional norms with regard to political parties.

Deshpande has been encouraged by a recent discovery that in the 30-odd years of its existence, the Sena has failed to register itself as an organisation either under the Registration of Societies Act of 1860 or Charitable Institutions Registration Act of 1950, mandatory for all political parties, barring split groups, under Section 29 (A) of the Representation of People’s Act of 1951.

Deshpande is seeking derecognition of the party on the grounds that while it did recently declare the Sena chief as its pramukh with Desai as its general secretary and Raj Thackeray as its treasurer, it still has not submitted the party constitution. Moreover, its earlier registration as the `All India Shiv Sena Party’ with the EC in 1975 during the Emergency may be held to be invalid because its application was not accompanied by a copy of the memorandum or regulations which set up its 1975 executive (which have no Thackeray names on it).

However, according to sources, in 1985 the Sena was compelled to produce a document to satisfy the EC norms when it appealed for permanent allocation of the `Bow and Arrow’ symbol. It had previously been contesting elections on various symbols, including the BJP’s Lotus, the Rising Sun and the Sword and Shield. It had to declare in this document that it believed in Sarva Dharma Sambhava as opposed to its Hindutva policy as the Representation of Peoples Act disqualifies any party that does not believe in socialism, secularism and sovereignty of the constitution.

Meanwhile, Desai denied that the EC had issued notices to the Sena to fall in line with its diktats on holding inner party elections or stand to be disqualified as a political party (such a diktat was issued to the Congress).

According to Uddhav, however, while enforcing elections on them will itself be an undemocratic act on the part of the EC, the party hopes to solve the problem amicably without challenging its authority in any way.