Maharashtra legislative council votes out chairman in no-confidence motion
1 min read 16 Mar 2015, 10:40 PM ISTForty-five members cast their vote in favour of the motion and 23 voted against it
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Mumbai: For the first time in the history of the Maharashtra legislature, the chairman of the legislative council, or the upper house, Shivajirao Deshmukh of the Congress, was voted out in a no-confidence motion.
Forty-five members cast their vote in favour of the motion and 23 voted against it.
Interestingly, the opposition Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which moved the motion, was supported by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP). The BJP’s alliance partner Shiv Sena leaders spoke against the no-confidence motion, but abstained from voting.
In the house of 87, while NCP has 28 members, its former partner, the Congress, has 21. Under a previous power-sharing arrangement between the two parties, the speaker’s post in the state assembly went to the NCP and the Congress got the post of council’s chairman.
Both parties contested last October’s assembly elections separately and were voted out of power. Subsequently, claiming that as both parties are no longer in alliance and as it has the higher numbers, the NCP staked its claim for the post of legislative council chairman. But the Congress refused to accept the NCP’s demand, and last week the latter moved a motion of no confidence.
