Mumbai: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed a recent order of the Bombay high court which had dismissed a petition filed by corporator Vishakha Raut challenging municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide’s letter to the state government last month to declare her disqualified for six years.Raut’s case to plead urgency before the apex court bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandip Mehta was that Bhide had made the request to “unseat her with retrospective effect’’ within five days of a caste scrutiny committee invalidating her caste certificate. The Supreme Court, while staying the September 2 high court order, said the seat be kept vacant till it decides the matter.Raut is a Shiv Sena (UBT) corporator and former mayor. She won the January 2026 BMC election from Ward 191 in Dadar (West).Appearing for Raut, senior counsel Indira Jaisingh with advocate Akshay Deshmukh sought a stay as interim relief. Her SLP argued she was democratically elected on January 16 and the “matter concerns the illegal, premature, and high-handed unseating and disqualification of the petitioner from her elected public office by the municipal commissioner during the mandatory statutory embargo period”.There is a 90-day appeal window, and the unseating order was “in direct defiance of this statutory bar”, Jaisingh argued.For the complainant, Priya Sarvankar Gurav, who had lost the election, senior counsel Kaul argued against any relief and submitted that since the disqualification issue was under consideration and pending no interference of the top court was needed.The Supreme Court, however, directed that her statutory appeal against the scrutiny committee decision before the appellate authority, the divisional commissioner Konkan Bhavan, be heard and decided on its own merits, uninfluenced by the high court order.Gurav had also filed an election petition to challenge Raut’s victory before the small causes court. Raut, on September 8, sought rejection of the election plea. Both are pending, the Supreme Court noted. With disqualification under challenge, the post be kept open, the Supreme Court reasoned.“In the absence of an immediate stay on the unseating order dated 25.08.2026, the petitioner faces imminent and catastrophic prejudice before the small causes court,’’ Raut pleaded before the Supreme Court.Before the high court on September 2, Raut’s senior counsel Surel Shah argued before a division bench of Justice Girish Kulkarni and Justice Neela Gokhale that the municipal commissioner had no power to write and make the request to the state. Senior counsel Rajendra Pai for Gurav had argued that the communication was merely a consequential request to notify her disqualification.The Supreme Court posted Raut’s matter for hearing next on October 28.
