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Updated July 3rd, 2022 at 12:23 IST

BJP's Rahul Narwekar elected as new Speaker of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly

Rahul Narwekar sailed past the majority mark with 164 votes, as opposed to 107 votes for MVA candidate and Shiv Sena MLA Rajan Salvi.

Reported by: Ananya Varma
Maharashtra
Image: Facebook/PTI | Image:self
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In a first big win for the Eknath Shinde camp, NDA candidate and BJP’s Rahul Narwekar was announced as the new Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on Sunday. Rahul Narwekar sailed past the majority mark with 164 votes, as opposed to 107 votes registered for MVA candidate and Shiv Sena MLA Rajan Salvi.

During the process, Samajwadi Party and AIMIM abstained from voting. SP's two MLAs Abu Azmi and Raees Shaikh and AIMIM's Shah Faruk Anwar refrained from casting their vote. In total, three MLAs abstained from voting.

After his landslide victory, which have helped prove the Shinde camp's decisive numbers, Narwekar was welcomed to the Chair of the Speaker with chants of 'Vande Mataram' and 'Jai Sri Ram'. Rahul Narwekar, who was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 2019, was pitted against Rajan Salvi, a three-time legislator from the Rajapur seat.

Mahrashtra Speaker's election

The post of Assembly Speaker has been vacant since 4 February 2021, when Nana Patole resigned to become the Maharashtra Congress president. On December 27 last year, Uddhav Thackeray had written to Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari seeking his approval to conduct the election of the Assembly Speaker.  In response, Koshyari contended that the holding of this election appears prima facie unconstitutional as the rules had been amended to allow open voting instead of a secret ballot. 

Expressing pain at the alleged "intemperate tone" of Thackeray's letter, he argued that it had belittled and denigrated the constitutional office of the Governor. The latter wrote, "I have never questioned the prerogative of the House in the matter of its procedure/proceedings; however, I cannot be pressurised to give consent to a process which prima facie appears to be unconstitutional and illegal as enshrined in the Article 208 of the Constitution". Subsequently, the MVA deferred its move to hold the Speaker's election. 

While the MVA government proposed conducting the Speaker's election on March 16 this year, the Governor's Principal Secretary Santosh Kumar wrote to Parliamentary Affairs Secretary Satish Waghole affirming that the poll can't be held as the matter is sub-judice. This was a reference to BJP MLA Girish Mahajan moving the Supreme Court against an amendment enabling the election of the Speaker to be conducted via an open vote system through a voice vote and show of hands instead of a secret ballot. However, the Governor allowed this poll to go ahead on July 3 after the Eknath Shinde-led government was sworn in. 

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Published July 3rd, 2022 at 12:04 IST

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