Eknath Shinde-led government reaches majority mark

Eknath Shinde-led government reached the majority mark in the Maharashtra Assembly on Monday in a trust vote. The Eknath Shinde camp got 164 votes while the Opposition camp led by the Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress got 99 votes. The numbers are interesting because on Sunday the Opposition got 107 votes for election of the Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly. 

The Shinde-led camp of the Shiv Sena appointed Bharat Gogwale as the chief party whip in the run-up to the trust vote. Aaditya Thackeray, Balasaheb Thackeray’s grandson, voted against the whip issued by Gogwale and is likely to face disqualification proceedings. 

Several members of the Maharashtra legislative Assembly stayed away from the vote. Zeeshan Siddique and Vijay Wadettiwar of the Congress did not show up in the assembly at all while former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan reached after the vote. NCP’s Sangram Jagtap too was absent. All four of these MLAs were present during the election of the speaker. Moreover, Samajwadi Party MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh abstained from voting as did AIMIM’s Shah Farukh Anwar. 

The floor test in the Maharashtra Assembly took place a day after BJP’s Rahul Narwekar was elected Speaker. 

The Eknath Shinde camp came to power after rebelling against the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena camp and ensured the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. The MVA was one of the most poignant experiments of the Indian Opposition to keep the BJP out of power in which political parties from opposing ends of the political spectrum. 

The Shinde camp’s allying with the BJP is a return to an age-old political configuration where the BJP and Shiv Sena work as partners, with one significant exception – the absence of a Thackeray to rule the roost.