Winter session of Maharashtra Assembly ends, Speaker post still vacant

The Speaker post in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly still remained vacant even after the conclusion of the Winter session on Tuesday as Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari and Maha Vikas Aghadi government continued to be in tussle over the election of the post.

Governor in a letter to the government raised several issues for the same citing technical and legal reasons.

Maharashtra assembly speaker's post has been vacant for over nine months now. The Budget session of the state Assembly will start on February 28.

Following the Assembly elections of 2019, Congress leader Nana Patole was elected Speaker of the House. But the post fell vacant in February 2021, after Patole resigned and was appointed president of Maharashtra state Congress.

On Tuesday morning Governor responded to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government's proposal of notifying Speaker's election in a sealed cover and raised some issues in the proposed process of Speaker election after which the state government decided not to go ahead with its plans to hold elections in the winter session.

The state government on December 24 has decided to hold the Assembly Speaker's election on December 28 and a proposal was sent to Raj Bhavan for Governor's consent on the same day.

Two days later, on December 26, a delegation of senior ministers met Governor Koshyari in Raj Bhavan and sought his consent for the election.

According to a source present in the meeting, Governor told MVA ministers that he was taking legal opinion on the constitutionality of the amendments made by the Rules Committee of the state legislature last week in order to conduct the election of the Speaker by voice vote instead of secret ballot

Opposition party BJP was also not in favour of holding elections without the Governor's consent. BJP had one more reservation about Speaker's election. BJP state president Chandrakant Patil said it would not be appropriate to proceed with the election in view of the fact that 12 lawmakers of the party had been suspended for a year during the Monsoon Session held in July.

Now, sources said that the government will either convene a special session of the Assembly for speaker's election or the process can be completed in the 2022 budget session.

( With inputs from ANI )

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