Mumbai:
Even as both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar have maintained that they are not in favor of supporting the Shiv Sena bid to form the next government in Maharashtra, state Congress has jumped in to encash the fluid political situation in the state. Speaking to newspersons, Leader of Opposition in Legislative Assembly, Vijay Wadettiwar stated that 90 percent of the newly elected legislators were in favor of a non-BJP government coming to power in Maharashtra.
Speaking to newspersons after BJPs core committee meeting held at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis official residence Varsha on Wednesday, Minister for Finance and Planning Sudhir Mungantiwar disclosed that he along with state BJP president Chandrakant Patil will be calling on Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari at Raj Bhavan on Thursday, November 7. He also added that the party will elect a new state president by December 31 this year.
Later in the evening, speaking to newspersons, senior Sena leader Sanjay Raut while commenting upon Mungantiwar’s remarks that the state will soon get to hear the good news of new Mahayuti government being formed, remarked “probably what Mungantiwar meant to say that the good news was that the Sena Chief Minister would be sworn-in soon”.
Meanwhile, the Sena has convened the meeting of all its newly elected MLAs on Thursday at Matoshree to discuss the issue of government formation. Union Minister for Social Justice and RPI-A leader Ramdas Athawale remarked that if the name of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray was mooted for the Chief Ministers post then it was a welcome move. He however, maintained that there was no other alternative before the Sena, but to form the next government along with the BJP.
By arguing that the NCP and Congress would jointly take any decision on the political situation in the state, Pawar has raised the anxiety levels both in the BJP and the Sena. The decision of the state Congress to support the Sena has no takers as yet in New Delhi where the Congress is skeptical about its impact on assembly elections in Jharkhand and New Delhi.
If the 44 MLAs of the Congress choose to remain absent during the trust vote of the Sena-NCP led government, such a government is likely to fall short of the revised majority mark of 123. In such a scenario the majority mark of 145 will come down to 123 for the government to win the trust vote. The Sena, NCP and supporting 8 Independent MLAs add up to 118. On the other hand, the BJP and its allies claim to have support of 121 MLAs, just two short of the revised majority mark.
