With rebel MLA Eknath Shinde moving the Supreme Court against the Shiv Sena's move to disqualify him and 15 other MLAs, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's team too upped the ante for a legal battle.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and J.B. Pardiwala said it cannot pass an order, which would create unnecessary complications. It told senior advocate Devdutt Kamat, representing the Maharashtra government, that if anything illegal happens, then he can always come back to the top court.
With time running out, the best option for the Shiv Sena rebels is to seek merger with a political party but for the Eknath Shinde-backed group things would not be that easy. The rebels were initially planning to name their group as Shiv Sena-Balasaheb Thackeray and get them recognised as a separate group in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.