Since February 2021, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has not had a Speaker. From available indications, this has not affected the functioning of the House. But it has created unprecedented tensions between the Governor, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, and Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government on the one hand and between the constituents of the MVA on the other. And if it hadn’t been for the intervention of the political patriarch of Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar, politics in the state might have taken a dramatically different turn.
The back story has the overlay of government-governor tensions. Nana Patole used to be in the Congress, joined the BJP (he won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from the Bhandara-Gondia constituency as a BJP candidate), but returned to the Congress. When the MVA government assumed office in the state, Patole was among those who expected to be rewarded for his home-coming. He was. He was made Speaker. But later, the Congress bestowed an even bigger gift on him: The presidentship of the state party unit. He resigned from the position of Speaker. This was allegedly done without consultations between the Congress, the second biggest party in the alliance, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Sena, who were both furious at the Congress’s unilateral move. Narhari Zirwal, deputy Speaker from the NCP, has been holding the fort since.
Even as alliance partners were fuming, the BJP made its moves. Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis began asking elections be held to the post of the Speaker. While this was an unexceptionable demand, the politics behind it was clear: The 288-member Assembly is held together by a government that is at best a fragile coalition. “We don’t need to do anything. This government will fall under the weight of its own contradictions,” Fadnavis has said on many occasions. The strategy was to seek an election for the position of Speaker and work to ensure many in the ruling coalition don’t support the candidate — and then strike.
Mindful of this, the MVA acted. On July 5, 2021, 12 BJP MLAs were suspended for one year for alleged misbehaviour in the office of the acting Speaker. Although their conduct had nothing to do with the proceedings of the House, they were suspended from the Assembly for one year. Fadnavis and the BJP cried foul and alleged the move was aimed at reducing the number of BJP MLAs in the lower House. But no one was listening.
Armed with a solid 12-MLA deficit, the MVA then amended the rules to elect a Speaker. Now, the governor was to order elections to the position of a Speaker ‘on the advice of the chief minister’. Earlier, the election of a Speaker was held when required. And the voting to elect the presiding officer of the Assembly was to be held by ‘voice vote’ and not ‘secret ballot’.
Armed with this political insurance, the chief minister then wrote to the governor asking him to hold elections.
The government can ask. The governor is not bound to act on the government’s request. There are numerous examples of this in Maharashtra itself: Raj Bhawan is still to approve 12 names recommended by the state Cabinet for nomination to the Upper House of the state legislature through the governor’s quota. The proposal was sent to the governor in November 2020. He is yet to take a decision on it.
The tensions between the chief minister and the governor turned into a matter of prestige: With Uddhav Thackeray needing to establish his primacy not just constitutionally but also to his political colleagues. “This is the same Uddhav Thackeray who wanted to come to the Legislature via the Upper House, but the governor kept on dangling him from a piece of string like a puppet,” said a former Congress chief minister. “He might have had to resign from the chief ministership, because the governor just ignored his request to hold elections to the Legislative Council, which was the route he took to become an elected MLC.” Thackeray finally had to speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and seek his intervention after which the governor relented and allowed elections to nine vacant seats in the Upper House even though a pandemic was raging.
The governor may have accommodated the chief minister then. But on the issue of the Speaker’s election, he seemed unrelenting. He wrote a letter to the chief minister, informing him that he was “studying the constitutionality” of the voting rules adopted by the Assembly. “I said so then, and I’m saying again: The governor should not study so much. It can cause indigestion. If someone faces indigestion, it could lead to abdominal pains. The state health department can treat such ailments,” said Sanjay Raut, member of Parliament from Shiv Sena and its chief spokesperson.
On December 24, a delegation of MVA MLAs met the governor to request him to hold elections to the post of Speaker. He was told the election had been fixed for December 28. It was almost a warning: “If the governor is acting contradictory to his constitutional duties, then the state will have to take some political steps as well,” Raut told reporters.
It was then that Sharad Pawar got into action: He spoke to Uddhav Thackeray and asked him to pull back from what could become a constitutional crisis — one that could even result in dismissal of the MVA government and imposition of President’s Rule. Pawar had already been tipped off by his nephew and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar about the turn events were taking.
The winter session of the Maharashtra Assembly thus ended on December 28 without the election of a Speaker. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray picked up the gauntlet, but has put it aside for the moment. But the question is: How long can the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly be Speaker-less? And who will blink first?