Mumbai, Bombay High Court has given big relief to Shiv Sena. A day before the deadline for filing nominations for the Andheri East seat in Mumbai ends, the High Court has ordered the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to accept the resignation of Rutuja Latte. Rutuja Latte is the wife of late Shiv Sena MLA Ramesh Latte. The Andheri East seat has fallen vacant due to the death of Ramesh Latke and Shiv Sena has decided to field Rutuja Latke. She works in BMC and she had resigned, which was not being accepted.
Rutuja Latke has been allowed to contest by-elections by the High Court’s decision. The High Court on Thursday ordered the BMC to accept his resignation. Notably, Friday is the last day for filing nominations. So this order came as a big relief to the Uddhav Thackeray faction. The Thackeray faction had accused the Eknath Shinde government of pressurizing the civic body to keep the candidate trapped.
The BMC chief insisted on taking his time, arguing that under the rules, he has a month to take his decision. BMC commissioner Iqbal Chahal had also denied any political pressure. But the Shiv Sena faction filed a petition in the High Court against the delay in accepting the resignation. The High Court on Thursday ordered the BMC to give them its acceptance letter by 11 am on Friday so that they can file nominations.
The court reprimanded BMC chief Iqbal Chahal and said in a questioning tone – Why is the Municipal Commissioner not using his discretion and taking decisions? If an employee wants to resign and contest elections, what is the difficulty? The petitioner is a clerk. This is just an employer-employee dispute. This is not even a matter that should have come to court. A bench of Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice Sharmila Deshmukh said – The commissioner should have done this himself till now.
