Mumbai:
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray stumped his critics with a nonchalant and witty speech in the legislative assembly on Sunday. After having ensured that 56 year old Congressman Nana Patole was elected unopposed to the post of Legislative Assembly Speaker, Thackeray remarked “: I won’t call you (Devendra Fadnavis) an ‘Opposition leader’, but I will call you a ‘responsible leader’. If you would have been good to us then, all this (BJP-Shiv Sena split) would have not happened”.
Later while, congratulating his onetime close friend Devendra Fadnavis for being appointed as the Leader of Opposition, the Chief Minister remarked “I have learnt a lot of things from Devendra Fadvanis and I will always be friends with him. I am still with the ideology of “Hindutva” and won’t ever leave it. In past 5 years, I have never betrayed the government”.
Earlier, in the morning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which had fielded its candidate Kisan Kathore against Patole, withdrew his candidature, paving the way for Patole getting elected unopposed to the Speakers post. Fadnavis later in a tweet stated “it has been the tradition in Maharashtra that the selection of the Legislative Assembly Speaker is held unanimously. Pro-tem Speaker Dilip Walse-Patil had made a request to that effect. The BJP too took a similar stance and congratulated Nana Patole for being elected Speaker, unopposed”.
Nana Patole hails from Bhandara district in Vidarbha region and represents the Sakoli assembly constituency in the Legislative Assembly. He was first elected to the legislative assembly in 1999 and was three term MLA till 2014. In 2014, he quit the Congress and joined the BJP and won the Lok Sabha election from the Bhandara-Gondiya constituency. Before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Patole quit the BJP and rejoined the Congress. The Congress then in December 2017 appointed him to head its Indian National Kisan Congress (INKC).
Later, Fadnavis tweeted “demanded immediate assistance of Rs 25,000 per hectare for the unseasonal rain affected farmers in the State Legislative Assembly today. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had already demanded this assistance while touring in affected areas. Now it is time to fulfill that demand !”
