Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, ordered to prove his majority tomorrow, has approached the Supreme Court. rebels, who have ignored Mr Thackeray’s appeals to return, are on their way from Guwahati to Goa today for the big vote.
Here’s your 10-point cheatsheet to this big story:
- Team Thackeray has gone to the Supreme Court with the argument that Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s order is illegal as 16 rebel MLAs have yet to respond on their possible disqualification. The Governor ordered the test of strength a day after BJP leaders met him and told him the Uddhav Thackeray-led coalition has lost its majority.
- The lawyer for the rebels’ camp, NK Kaul, told the Supreme Court that the pending hearing for possible disqualification has nothing to do with proving majority. The Supreme Court then said it will hear the matter at 5 pm today.
- The governor had acted with “jet speed”, said Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, alleging that the call for an assembly vote was illegal when the Supreme Court had yet to decide on the disqualification of rebel MLAs. The Shiv Sena argues that 16 MLA served disqualification notices cannot participate in the floor test until the court decides on their status.
- BJP Mumbai Secretary Vivekanand Gupta said the Governor is not a respondent to the disqualification matter before the Supreme Court. “Hence no order of Supreme court is binding on him. The Governor being the constitutional head is well with his rights to call for floor test, when MLAs have shown no confidence in the government,” Mr Gupta tweeted.
- Nearly 40 Shiv Sena MLAs have deserted Uddhav Thackeray and joined Eknath Shinde, who moved from Mumbai, first to Surat in Gujarat and later to Assam’s Guwahati, with a group of MLAs that has been expanding by the day. After a week at a five-star hotel in Guwahati, the MLAs are set to fly to Goa, around 600 km from Mumbai, to participate in the no-trust vote.
- “We will reach Mumbai tomorrow. 50 MLAs are with us. We’ve two-thirds majority. We are not worried about any floor test. We will pass the test and no one can stop us. In a democracy majority matters and we have that,” Mr Shinde told reporters in Guwahati today.
- Mr Shinde and some of the rebels went to the Kamakhya Temple this morning in Assam’s main city by the Brahmaputra River where he told reporters he would return to Mumbai tomorrow.
- Team Thackeray had asked the Deputy Speaker to disqualify 16 MLAs including Mr Shinde, after which the rebel camp approached the Supreme Court, calling the move illegal. The court gave the rebel Sena MLAs time until July 12 to respond to notices for their possible disqualification.
- The test of strength will be telecast live and the proceedings will be recorded on camera by the Vidhan Sabha Secretariat through an independent agency, the Governor said. “In order to ensure free and fair voting, it shall be conducted by asking members to rise in their seats for the purpose of counting votes…” Mr Koshyari said.
- Mr Shinde claims he has the support of nearly 50 MLAs, some 40 of them from the Shiv Sena. The majority mark currently stands at 144 in the 287-member assembly. The ruling alliance of the Shiv Sena, Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, or NCP, has 152 MLAs. The state government will shrink to minority without the nearly 40 rebel MLAs.