Mumbai, November 26: "The floor test in the Maharashtra assembly for CM Devendra Fadnavis to prove his majority in the assembly will be conducted on Wednesday", the Supreme Court directed on Tuesday. Also it directed Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari to ensure that all elected members of the house are sworn in on Wednesday itself. "The entire exercise has to be completed by 5 pm", it added.
A bench comprising Justices N V Ramana, Ashok Bhushan and Sanjiv Khanna also said the entire proceedings has to be telecast live. Voting in the assembly shall not be on the basis of secret ballot, it said. The governor will also appoint a pro-tem speaker who will administer oath to the newly elected members. The oaths were administered at a time when deliberations among the three parties on government formation had reached the final stage. The urgent plea filed by the trio sought a direction to conduct an immediate floor test.
Floor test is a constitutional mechanism under which a chief minister can be asked to prove majority in the state Assembly. During the course of proceedings yesterday, even though the Governor's office and all the parties agreed to a floor test, they had a scattered view on when it should be held.
The state governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari had earlier asked the state government to take the floor test in two weeks' time from Devendra Fadnavis' swearing-in. The Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress had approached the SC against the governor’s move to give the Fadnavis time till Saturday. Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray is claiming the support of 162 legilsators. Koshyari had installed the Fadnavis government on the morning of 23 November.
The BJP, the largest party in the state with 105 seats, had earlier decided against staking claim to the form the government. The BJP and Shiv Sena had fought the October elections in an alliance. Once the results were released, Shiv Sena insisted on a 50-50 seat sharing formula including having its nominee as the chief minister for half the term. This was not acceptable to the BJP, which got almost double the number of Shiv Sena’s 56 seats.