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Duties of the Speaker even if a no-confidence motion is pending against him. The Speaker’s post is vacant since last year. Earlier in the day, Shiv Sena MLA and Uddhav Thackeray loyalist Rajan Salvi filed his nomination as the candidate of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance for the Assembly Speaker’s election to be held on Sunday. He will face BJP MLA Rahul Narvekar for the first time, who also filed his nomination.
On July 4, the newly appointed Chief Minister Shinde will take a floor test. 50 MLAs supporting Shinde, including 39 rebel Shiv Sena MLAs, took a chartered flight from Goa to Mumbai on Saturday evening. Shinde, who had left for Goa in the morning, came back with him. The MLA had been camping at a starred hotel in Dona Paula since June 29 after taking a flight from Guwahati to Goa. Many of them had left Maharashtra along with Shinde on June 21. Sources said that after reaching Mumbai, the rebel MLAs will stay at a hotel before attending the special session on Sunday morning.
In Mumbai, airport security was tightened to avoid any untoward incident in the wake of recent violent protests against rebel MLAs by Shiv Sena workers in parts of the state. Thackeray resigned as chief minister on Wednesday after the Supreme Court refused to stay the floor test ordered by the governor and it became clear that Shinde had the support of a majority of Shiv Sena MLAs. Shinde was sworn in as CM the next day as deputy to BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis. The post of Speaker of the Assembly has been lying vacant since the resignation of Congress’ Nana Patole to become the state unit president of his party in February 2021. During this, Deputy Speaker Narhari Jirwal was acting as the Acting Speaker. Meanwhile, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said that there will be a long legal battle ahead to decide which faction of Shiv Sena will be considered as the ‘original’ party.
“What I think will be the final decision of the court,” he told reporters in Pune. On Friday, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray removed Shinde from the post of ‘Shiv Sena leader’ for ‘anti-party activities’. Supporter Shinde MLA Deepak Kesarkar said the chief minister would challenge the decision in court. Earlier, Thackeray had appointed Ajay Choudhary as the leader of the assembly in place of Shinde, which was approved by acting president Jirwal.
On the other hand, several independent MLAs who supported Shinde also moved a no-confidence motion against Jirwal. Pawar claimed that the no-confidence motion “does not bar him (Zirwal) from serving the office” and that he can still perform the duty of the acting president. The Shiv Sena on Saturday said the swearing-in of former chief minister Fadnavis as the deputy CM was a “shocking climax” of the drama of political instability in the state, and questioned the BJP why it had not shown a “big heart” by honoring him. Rotational CM’s agreement in 2019 when Shiv Sena had demanded CM’s post for two and a half years.
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