Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday won the crucial floor test in the state assembly on the last day of the special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. The two week political turmoil ended after Shinde comfortably won the trust vote. The opposition, comprising the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, could not touch 100; it was down to 99 from 107 during the voting for the Speaker’s post.
“Now we are 165, next time 200 will come,” said Shinde after winning the trust vote. Meanwhile, deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis proudly adopted the opposition’s jibe from the previous day and announced “It’s the ED (Eknath-Devendra) government”.
After winning, Shinde said, “We Will take Balasaheb Thackeray’s legacy forward. MLAs have shown faith in me. It’s a promise. If not, I’ll go back to my village and start farming with my grandson.”
Despite a whip issued by Shinde camp’s chief whip Bharat Gogawale, who was appointed on Sunday night, 15 legislators from Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, including Aaditya Thackeray, voted against. Gogawale has issued notices to 14 legislators, excluding Aaditya, for being the grandson of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, for breach of whip. These 14 MLAs are expected to face disqualification proceedings. Shinde has claimed to be the real Shiv Sena, with the support of more than two-thirds of the party MPs.
In all, 18 legislators were absent during the trust vote, of which 11 were from Congress, four from NCP and two from the BJP. Shyamsundar Shinde from Shetkari Kamgar Paksh voted in favour of Shinde, though he did not join the Shinde faction.
After the death of a Shiv Sena MLA recently, the current strength of the Assembly is reduced to 287, thus the majority mark is 144.
During the floor test, MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh (both from the Samajwadi Party) and Shah Farukh Anwar (AIMIM) abstained from voting.
Eleven Congress MLAs – Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar, Dheeraj Deshmukh, Praniti Shinde, Jitesh Antapurkar, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Raju Awale, Mohan Hambarde, Kunal Patil, Madhavrao Jawalgaonkar and Shirish Chaudhary – were absent during the floor test.
Chavan and Wadettiwar came late and were unable to enter the House at the time of the vote.
The NCP legislators absent from the House were Anil Deshmukh, Nawab Malik, Dattatray Bharane, Anna Bansode and Sangram Jagtap. Deshmukh and Malik are currently in jail following arrest in separate money laundering cases.
Two BJP MLAs – Mukta Tilak and Laxman Jagtap – both of whom are seriously ill, also did not come to the House, while BJP’s Rahul Narvekar could not vote as he is the Speaker. AIMIM legislator Mufti Mohammad Ismail also did not attend the session.
