Maharashtra's newest Chief Minister Eknath Shinde won the floor test in the State Assembly on Monday in mere 23 minutes. In the 288-member House, 164 MLAs voted for the motion of confidence, while 99 voted against it.

Newly-elected Speaker Rahul Narvekar announced that the trust vote has been 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. A total of 22 MLAs remained absent during the process. This includes 10 Congress MLAs - Jitesh Antapurkar, Zeeshan Siddique, Praniti Shinde, Ashok Chavan, Vijay Wadettiwar, Dhiraj Deshmukh, Kunal Patil, Raju Awale, Mohanrao Hambarde and Shirish Chaudhari.

The NCP legislators absent from the House were - Anil Deshmukh, Nawab Malik, Dattatray Bharane, Anna Bansode, Babandada Shinde and Sangram Jagtap. Deshmukh and Malik are currently in jail following arrest in separate money laundering cases. The BJP MLAs - Mukta Tilak and Laxman Jagtap - both of whom are seriously ill, also did not come to the House, while BJP's Rahul Narvekar could not vote as he is the Speaker.

AIMIM legislator Mufti Mohammad Ismail also did not attend the session. Samajwadi Party MLAs Abu Azmi and Rais Shaikh and AIMIM's Shah Farukh Anwar abstained from voting.

Shinde was sworn in as the Chief Minister on June 30, a day after Uddhav Thackeray quit the post. BJP's Devendra Fadnavis was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.

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Following Shinde's roaring win, Fadnavis said, "Shinde is the follower of Balasaheb Thackeray and Anand Dighe. He has always been selfless."

In yet another jolt to the Uddhav faction, an MLA joined the Shinde camp ahead of the floor test, taking its tally to 40. The Shiv Sena currently has 55 MLAs in the 288-member state Assembly. Santosh Bangar, the MLA from Kalamnuri in the Hingoli district, switched over to the Shinde camp. Another MLA Shyamsundar Shinde, from Shetkari Kamgar Paksh, voted in favour of Shinde. He, however, did not join the Shinde faction.

Mumbai | Another Shiv Sena MLA of Uddhav Thackeray faction, Santosh Bangar, seen with Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and MLAs of his faction.Bangar had left with the Shinde faction MLAs from hotel this morning and arrived with them at the Assembly now. pic.twitter.com/yeUXC8iZqU

— ANI (@ANI) July 4, 2022

Earlier in the day, Narvekar also recognised the appointment of Bharat Gogawale from the Shinde camp as the chief whip of the Sena, removing Sunil Prabhu, who belongs to the Thackeray faction. He had on Sunday reinstated Shinde as the Shiv Sena legislature party leader, removing Ajay Chaudhary.

First Published:Jul 4, 2022 1:08 PM IST