Express News Service
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the first litmus test of state assembly speaker elections on Sunday. The floor test has been scheduled for July 4.
BJP nominated and Shinde camp supported candidate Rahul Narvekar won the assembly speaker elections by 57 votes against Shiv Sena’s Rajan Salvi.
Out of 288 members of the House, Narvekar got a total of 167 votes including independent MLAs and smaller parties votes while Maha Vikas Aghadi’s joint candidate Rajan Salvi got 107 votes. In this voting, the Samajwadi Party and the MIM voters were absent. Besides, seven NCP MLAs including Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh were absent while two BJP MLAs and two Congress MLAs were absent.
Shiv Sena asked the acting speaker Narhari Zirwal to keep on record that 39 Shiv Sena MLAs who are with Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde cross-voted against the party whip. He said all voting of these cross-voted Shiv Sena MLAs are kept aside and video recorded. Shiv Sena MLA and chief whip Sunil Prabhu said that these 39 rebelled Sena MLAs violated the party’s whip and crossed voted to BJP’s candidate in speaker post-elections. He said that all these MLAs who cross-voted should be disqualified for anti-party activities.
“This is nothing but murder of democracy. MLAs are not listening to the party on which ticket they elected. This fit to disqualify them under anti-defection laws. We will approach the court against it,” Prabhu said.
After the speaker election, the Shinde camp also put on record in the state assembly that the 16 Shiv Sena MLAs crossed voted against the Shiv Sena whip. Deepak Kesarkar, the spokesperson of the Shinde camp, said chief whip Bharat Gogawale had asked all the Shiv Sena MLAs including Uddhav Thackeray and Sena MLAs to vote for the BJP’s candidate Milind Marvekar, but Thackeray group voted another Shiv Sena candidate Rajan Salvi.
The constitutional experts said both the camp of Shiv Sena has complained against each other over cross-voting against each other candidates. “Now, both parties asked disqualification of each other MLAs. The speaker will take this matter on hearing and give his verdict. After that only, they can approach to court against the speaker’s decisions,” they added.
Interestingly, while counting the numbers in the state assembly, many MLAs were not able to pronounce the right numbers which created a lot of confusion and laughter. Treasury benches hurled slogans hailing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, while the opposition shouted ED when rebelled Shiv Sena MLAs counted the numbers. The head was counted to check which side how many MLAs there in speaker post-elections. After the voting, the Shinde camp and the BJP asked its MLAs to go back to the hotel Taj presidency in Mumbai. They will be again brought back on Monday for the floor test.
Narvekar got elected from the Colaba constituency in Mumbai. He is one of the youngest speakers of the state assembly. It is to be noted that his father-in-law Ram Raje Nimbalkar is NCP MLC and chairman of the state legislative council.
Narvekar is a lawyer by profession. Earlier he was very close to Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray, Narvekar later joined the NCP and was very close to NCP leader Ajit Pawar. He contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on an NCP ticket from the Mawal constituency, later he became the NCP MLC. After which he joined the BJP and got elected in 2019 and is now elected as speaker of the state assembly.