Evening Pulse: Courts set Maharashtra's day as Sena case slips and Shinde calls INDIA march a 'black day'

Judges set Maharashtra's agenda on Tuesday, sometimes by ruling and sometimes by not sitting at all. Since the afternoon, the state's biggest pending political case slipped again, the Leader of the Opposition got relief in a Mumbai defamation case, and a BJP MLA lost a cooperative bank fight in the High Court. Away from the courtrooms, a worker died in Raigad and cane farmers took to the highway.

The illness that pushed the Delhi protest pleas to Thursday, as we reported this afternoon, also took the Shiv Sena case off the board. TV9 Marathi and Saam TV reported that the hearing on who owns the Shiv Sena name and the bow-and-arrow symbol would not go ahead because Justice V Mohana was absent. Lawyers for Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's faction had been due to argue. No new date was announced by evening. Both reports said one is expected soon.

Shinde spent the day on the attack. At a news conference in Mumbai, he called Monday's INDIA bloc march to the Supreme Court an attempt to pressure the judiciary and "a black Day in Indian history", PTI reported via ThePrint. He said the opposition must apologise to 140 crore people. He also asked why the opposition never doubted voting machines when it won states such as Telangana and Karnataka. We found no reply from Shiv Sena (UBT) or the Congress by evening.

One story we missed at 1 pm cuts the other way. A Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Aparesh Kumar Singh stayed proceedings against Rahul Gandhi in the Girgaon magistrate's court in Mumbai, The Statesman and Navarashtra reported. The case was filed by BJP member Mahesh Shrishrimal over Gandhi's 2018 Rafale remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gandhi had challenged an 8 September Bombay High Court order that refused to quash the summons. The court issued notice to the Maharashtra government and the complainant, returnable in four weeks.

In Sangli, the Kolhapur circuit bench of the Bombay High Court declared BJP MLA Gopichand Padalkar's nomination for the Sangli District Central Cooperative Bank election invalid, Sarkarnama and Navarashtra reported. Former Congress MLA Vikram Sawant had challenged it. Sarkarnama said the grounds related to eligibility rules on directorship experience and supporting documents. Sawant welcomed the order and demanded criminal action against those who, he alleged, helped supply false papers. Neither report carried a response from Padalkar.

The day's worst news came from Khalapur taluka in Raigad. An iron shed under construction at the Kasturi Logistics warehouse near Mankivali collapsed on Tuesday morning, UNI and Saamana reported. One worker died in treatment and about 25 were injured. Saamana named the dead worker as Subhash Niranjan Yadav and said eight of the injured were in serious condition. Police have opened an inquiry. Neither report said whether an FIR had been registered, and the cause is not yet known.

On the border, Raju Shetti's Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana and Karnataka farmer groups began an indefinite blockade at the Kognoli toll plaza on the Pune-Bengaluru highway, UNI and ETV Bharat reported. The move followed Monday's talks in Delhi with Union ministers Pralhad Joshi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, which ended without a decision. ETV Bharat said the farmers want ₹70 a litre for ethanol among other price demands, and that Belagavi police had deployed about 2,000 personnel across three protest sites and diverted traffic.

Several loops from this afternoon stayed open. The voter-roll claims window still runs to 26 October, and we found no running count of claims. We found no summons in the FIR against Aaditya and Amit Thackeray, no public reply from Sena (UBT) to Anand Dubey's exit, and still no date for the central meeting on drought relief.