Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on July 4 won the floor test in the State Assembly on the last day of the two-day special session of the House. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it. Three legislators abstained from voting, while Congress's Ashok Chavan and Vijay Wadettiwar were among those absent during the trust vote. Speaker Rahul Narvekar announced that the trust vote was carried by a majority vote. After the death of a Shiv Sena MLA recently, the current strength of the Assembly is reduced to 287, thus the majority mark is 144.
Amid the beginning of a legal battle between the two factions of the Shiv Sena — one led by former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the other by rebel leader and new Chief Minister Eknath Shinde — both groups of the party violated the whips issued by the other group for the Speaker’s election in the Maharashtra Assembly. Rahul Narvekar from the BJP was elected Speaker on June 3 after he garnered 164 votes.
