Mumbai:
The Congress today claimed that a chunk of its MLAs were made to wait outside the Maharashtra assembly and they were not allowed to vote during the test of strength of the Eknath Shinde government. The Uddhav Thackeray faction had a crushing defeat, its strength lower than even yesterday’s Speaker election.
“As you can see in this picture all of us congress MLA’s were in the vidhanbhavan together in the lobby but weren’t allowed to enter and vote as the gates shut a couple of minutes before we could enter,” tweeted Congress MLA Zeeshan Siddique.
“We even requested Hon. speaker to allow us to vote as MVA voting had not begun,” he added.
As you can see in this picture all of us congress MLA’s were in the vidhanbhavan together in the lobby but weren’t allowed to enter and vote as the gates shut a couple of minutes before we could enter. We even requested Hon. speaker to allow us to vote as MVA voting had not begun pic.twitter.com/u2Xqc0IwD8
— Zeeshan Siddique (@zeeshan_iyc) July 4, 2022
His tweet, however, drew jeers from many, who called it a “childish excuse” and pointed out that MLAs should be in time for work.
In today’s voting, the Eknath Shinde camp showed 164 votes — way more than the 140-plus votes expected. M Shinde officially had the support of around 50 MLAs, 39 of them from the Sena and the rest Independents. The BJP has 109 MLAs.
The Opposition got 99 — down from the 107 they mustered yesterday during the voting for the Speaker. Among those missing were at least 10 Congress MLAs. Several MLAs of the Sena and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party did not show up either.
One Sena MLA switched to the Shinde camp, which has claimed to be the real Sena and is likely to take action against Aaditya Thackeray. The former state minister and son the Uddhav Thackeray has defied the whip from the Shinde section and voted against the government.
The Sena MLA who switched sides, Santosh Bangar, was booed by the opposition when he voted with Eknath Shinde, with many screaming “ED (Enforcement Directorate).