Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde wins trust vote in state assembly

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has won the trust vote in the state assembly. Shinde got 164 votes in his favour during the trust vote in the Assembly. The majority mark in the assembly was 144.

Vipin Vijayan

Mumbai, First Published Jul 4, 2022, 11:31 AM IST

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has won the trust vote in the state assembly. Eknath Shinde got 164 votes in his favour during the trust vote in the Assembly. The majority mark in the assembly was 144.

In the 288-member House, only 99 MLAs voted against the motion of confidence. Speaker Rahul Narvekar announced that the trust vote has been carried by a majority vote. Shinde was sworn in as chief minister on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray quit the post. BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.

Also Read: Next Maha battle: Who controls the Shiv Sena?

Shinde had received a shot in the arm just before the floor test when one more MLA from the Uddhav Thackeray camp joined his faction. This took the number of Sena MLAs supporting him to 40. To note, Sena has 55 MLAs in the 288-member state assembly. The latest to jump ship from the Uddhav camp was Kalamnuri MLA Santosh Bangar.

Samajwadi Party MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh and AIMIM's Shah Farukh Anwar 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.

Congress party's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar were unable to enter the House at the time of voting because they came late.

The NCP legislators absent from the House were Anil Deshmukh, Dattatray Bharane, Anna Bansode, Nawab Malik, Babandada Shinde and Sangram Jagtap. Deshmukh and Malik are currently in jail following their arrest in separate money laundering cases.

On Sunday, Uddhav's camp received a major jolt when newly-elected Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar removed Ajay Chaudhary as the Shiv Sena legislature party leader and reinstated Shinde. He also removed Sunil Prabhu, who belongs to the Uddhav faction, as the Sena chief whip and recognised the appointment of Bharat Gogawale from the Shinde camp.

That put the Uddhav camp in a tight spot. With the Shinde camp having the right to issue a whip, the MLA supporting Uddhav would have had to vote for the Shinde camp or risk disqualification.

Also Read: Rahul Narvekar is Maharashtra Assembly's new Speaker; know his net worth, cars, property and more

Last Updated Jul 4, 2022, 1:52 PM IST