Mumbai, March 3 Shiv Sena UBT and Congress are pitted against each other following their claims on the post of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Maharashtra Assembly and the council.
After Shiv Sena UBT, with 20 legislators, has staked claim for the LoP post in the legislative assembly, the Congress legislator Nana Patole took a serious objection, saying that with Sena UBT having numbers in the lower house, hence there is no issue in giving the opposition leader post to Sena UBT. However, in council, Congress has more numbers, hence the Leader of Opposition post in the upper house should be with Congress.
"In the state assembly, the Sena UBT is a big party (with the largest members in the MVA) so they should announce their candidate's name for the Leader of Opposition. As per the tradition of functioning of legislature, the party which has the largest MLAs gets the leader of opposition post. So its obvious that in the lower house, they (Sena UBT) have the maximum number of MLAs, so it will be their leader of opposition, in the council however we have the majority of members in opposition so there would be our leader of LoP there is nothing more in it," said Patole.
The standoff between Shiv Sena UBT and Congress comes amid the uncertainty over whether the post will be given to opposition parties by the Assembly Speaker as all the three Opposition parties Shiv Sena UBT, Congress and NCP SP together have 46 legislators in the 288-member Legislative Assembly.
The ruling MahaYuti has asserted that a party should have at least 10 per cent of the total strength in the state assembly to qualify for the post. The Maharashtra Assembly has 288 MLAs — 10 per cent of the total strength works to 28.8 (29). None of the Opposition parties alone have 29 MLAs at present.
The MahaYuti has argued that since none of the opposition parties have managed to win 10 per cent MLAs of the total strength of the house, the LoP cannot be appointed.
However, the MVA leaders have claimed that there is no mention in the legislative rules that the mandatory 10 per cent member condition.
“There is no such rule (of strength), in many states even parties with four or five members have got the post of Leader of the Opposition to maintain the spirit of democracy. Here, our combined total is over 50. Therefore, it is not difficult to become the opposition leader of Shiv Sena,” Sena UBT MP Sanjay Raut said, adding that the Sena UBT majority of MLAs in the Assembly and hence the LoP would be from Shiv Sena UBT.
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