IT News
Mumbai, Nov 26
The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday asked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Maharashtra to immediately appoint a pro-tem speaker to conduct the test and prove its majority on the floor of the 299 member legislative assembly on Wednesday by 5 pm.
The apex court also ordered live broadcast of the confidence motion and said there will be no secret ballot. The verdict made it crystal clear that the floor test should be absolutely transparent and there will be no “horse trading” (poaching of MLAs from other parties).
A three-judge bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramana and Justices Ashok Bhushan and Sanjiv Khanna heard the matter. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared for Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi appeared for the BJP and “some” independent legislators, while solicitor general Tushar Mehta appeared for the central government.
In a related development NCP leader Ajit Pawar who had rebelled and sworn in as Deputy CM alongwith Fadnavis, on early Saturday morning ( 23 November), today tendered his resignation from the post of DCM. Fadnavis too was expected to resign and address media by Tuesday evening.
The Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari had earlier asked the state government to take the floor test in two weeks’ time (by 30 November). The Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress had approached the SC against the governor’s move to give the Fadnavis time till Saturday.
Shiv Sena parry president Uddhav Thackeray is claiming the support of 162 legislators. While the NCP and the Congress had been deliberating an alliance for the last three weeks and were all set to announce the name of Thackeray as their choice for the Maharashtra CM post, the BJP lured NCP founder Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar into its fold late Friday evening. By 8 AM. Saturday morning, the governor had sworn-in Fadnavis as CM and Ajit as his deputy.
Alliances on both sides—BJP-Ajit Pawar and Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress—have expressed confidence over having the numbers in the assembly to form the government in the state.
Contradictory statements followed with Ajit claiming the support of majority of MLAs with Sharad Pawar disputing his nephew’s claims. This was followed by NCP removing Ajit as its legislative party leader and the Shiv Sena and Congress-NCP combine moving the SC against the governor’s decision.
The BJP, the largest party in the state with 105 seats, had earlier decided against staking claim to the form the government. The BJP and Shiv Sena had fought the October elections in an alliance. Once the results were released, Shiv Sena insisted on a 50-50 seat sharing formula including having its nominee as the chief minister for half the term. This was not acceptable to the BJP, which got almost double the number of Shiv Sena’s 56 seats.
In the meanwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah were closeted in a meeting to work out a way out to resolve Maharashtra political impasse.
