Maharashtra’s new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the floor test at the State Assembly on Monday in just 23 minutes. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted in favor of the no-confidence motion, while 99 voted against it.
The newly elected president, Rahul Narvekar, announced that the confidence vote was carried out by majority. After the death of a Shiv Sena MLA recently, the Assembly’s current strength drops to 287, making the majority mark 144. A total of 22 MLAs remained absent during the process. This includes 10 Congress MLAs: Jitesh Antapurkar, Zeeshan Siddique, Praniti Shinde, Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar, Dhiraj Deshmukh, Kunal Patil, Raju Awale, Mohanrao Hambarde and Shirish Chaudhari.
The NCP lawmakers absent from the House were: Anil Deshmukh, Nawab Malik, Dattatray Bharane, Anna Bansode, Babandada Shinde and Sangram Jagtap. Deshmukh and Malik are currently in jail after being arrested in separate money laundering cases. BJP MLAs Mukta Tilak and Laxman Jagtap, both seriously ill, also failed to attend the House, while BJP’s Rahul Narvekar was unable to vote as he is the chairman.
AIMIM lawmaker Mufti Mohammad Ismail also did not attend the session. Samajwadi Party MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh and Shah Farukh Anwar of AIMIM abstained from voting.
Shinde was sworn in as Chief Minister on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray stepped down. Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP was sworn in as deputy prime minister.
After Shinde’s great victory, Fadnavis said: “Shinde is the follower of Balasaheb Thackeray and Anand Dighe. He has always been selfless ».
In another shake-up to the Uddhav faction, an MLA joined Shinde’s camp before the floor test, bringing his tally to 40. Shiv Sena currently has 55 MLAs in the 288-member-state Assembly. Santosh Bangar, the Kalamnuri MLA in Hingoli district, moved to Shinde camp. Another MLA, Shyamsundar Shinde of Shetkari Kamgar Paksh, voted for Shinde. He, however, did not join the Shinde faction.
Mumbai | Another Shiv Sena MLA from Uddhav Thackeray’s faction, Santosh Bangar, seen with Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and MLA from his faction. Bangar had left with the Shinde faction MLAs from the hotel this morning and arrived with them at the Assembly now. pic.twitter.com/yeUXC8iZqU
– ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2022
Earlier in the day, Narvekar also acknowledged the appointment of Shinde camp’s Bharat Gogawale as leader of the Sena, removing Sunil Prabhu, who belongs to Thackeray’s faction. On Sunday he had reinstated Shinde as leader of the Shiv Sena legislative party, ousting Ajay Chaudhary.