SP & AIMIM MLAs abstain from voting in Maharashtra Assembly Speaker election

In a big breakthrough, Eknath Shinde camp-BJP alliance candidate Rahul Narwekar (BJP MLA) has been elected as the new Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly. However, Samajwadi Party (SP) abstained from voting against the BJP candidate Rahul Narwekar at the Maharashtra Assembly. Both its MLAs - Abu Azmi and Raees Shaikh - abstained from voting. Similarly, AIMIM's Shah Faruq Anwar also abstained from voting to elect the next Speaker of the 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.

Maharashtra 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.