The Speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly could not be elected. The government had fixed December 28, the last day of the winter session, as the election day and wanted the election to be held by voice vote and Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari did not allow it. The government should have guessed that the governor would not approve. After all, the governor has not yet decided on the 12 names sent by the state government for nomination to the Legislative Council on November 6, 2020, so how would he have approved the election of the speaker by voice vote! The government must have been aware of this, yet it sent a proposal to the governor to choose the speaker by voice vote.
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Does the state government also want the assembly to continue running in the same way with the help of deputy speaker? After all, the central government has also not conducted the election of deputy speaker in the Lok Sabha for two and a half years. It should be noted that Congress leader Nana Patole had resigned from the post of Speaker in February this year. After that he became the state president of Congress but the speaker was not elected. Now the speaker will be elected in the budget session of the assembly itself. This means that the assembly will remain without a speaker till February.
One of the reasons behind the non-election of the speaker for so long is that the leaders of both Shiv Sena and NCP are hesitant to give the speaker’s post to the Congress. Sharad Pawar’s party NCP is putting more leg in this. On the other hand, Congress is also not ready to give up the post of Speaker in exchange for a ministerial post. Everyone knows how important the speaker’s post is in a hung assembly.
