Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said that assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar will take the decision on the disqualification of MLAs and other issues at an appropriate time and if anyone tries to pressure him in any way, then it won't be compatible with the country's free and fair legal process.
Leaders of 38 parties have confirmed their participation in a meeting of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to be held in the national capital on Tuesday, Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda said.
Pawar did not entertain requests from members of the opposition INDIA alliance to not share stage with Modi.
Now, with the INDIA bloc putting up an impressive show in the Lok Sabha polls and managing to stop the BJP juggernaut, opposition leaders will be looking at the senior Pawar for guidance in navigating the political space against the saffron party post-elections.
Several top Congress leaders from party chief Mallikarjun Kharge to former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were involved in the hectic parleys with Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar, which finally helped to break the logjam over the top post in Karnataka.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar is a "senior leader and MLA of the party", Supriya Sule said on Thursday when asked about the status of the former in the Nationalist Congress Party.
Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, appointed for coordinating the state's border dispute with Karnataka, are unlikely to visit Belagavi on Tuesday as both have various meetings scheduled in Maharashtra during the day.
Fasting quota activist Manoj Jarange on Monday sought reservation for the Maratha community in entire Maharashtra and not in specific regions and warned the ongoing agitation will be ratcheted up if the demand was not fulfilled by the state government.
Later in the afternoon, he also said that he was planning to hold a rally of the Maratha community at the protest site on October 12. "It will be attended by all the Marathas. It will show our plight and disappointment.... I will continue my protest here and will not even see the faces of my children till then," he said.
The announcement, made at the end of a speech of more than one hour in Antarwali Sarati in Jalna in which Jarange made several allegations against Fadnavis, took his supporters by surprise.
As most victims' bodies were charred beyond recognition, the authorities have decided to conduct DNA testing to identify them before handing them over to the relatives.
'The Speaker has to act in an impartial way and in accordance with what the Supreme Court has laid out in its judgment.'
Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Friday questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party's decision to install a "so-called Shiv Sainik" as Maharashtra chief minister when it did not keep its 2019 promise of rotating the top post, and slammed the new government's move to relocate a Mumbai Metro car shed to green belt of Aarey Colony, reversing a key decision of the previous regime.
'They should not forget that had we decided not to rebel, they would still be chanting slogans from the footsteps of the Vidhan Sabha.'
Amid the deepening political turmoil in Maharashtra, state Congress president Nana Patole accused Deputy CM and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar of harassing Congress legislators and ministers by stalling their development funds.
'The Maharashtra government is not being very clear; they are keeping quiet.'
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said the Election Commission's order recognising Eknath Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena was "dangerous for democracy", and he would challenge it in the Supreme Court.
The Nationalist Congress Party leader did not name Borwankar, but said some allegations had been levelled against him by "a retired IPS officer who had served in Pune as commissioner of police."
If any corruption has taken place in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which was ruled by the undivided Shiv Sena for more than two decades, then probe it, but also inquire into the work done by states during the pandemic, he said.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Addressing his party workers in Nagpur, the home turf of Fadnavis, Thackeray on Monday said the BJP leader, his former ally, was a taint on the city as he had aligned with a section of the Nationalist Congress Party despite asserting that he would never do so.
Elections to local governing bodies can be held now with OBC quota in Maharashtra, with the Supreme Court giving its nod on Wednesday, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said in Mumbai.
Uddhav claimed that splits were engineered in many parties using central agencies and arrests were made illegally.
Aaditya Thackeray on Wednesday sought to distance himself from the strident "anti-migrant" stance that the Shiv Sena, founded by his late grandfather Bal Thackeray, has often been accused of.
Thackeray would be taking over as chief minister more than a month after results of the Maharashtra Assembly elections were declared on October 24.
'You know how politics is. You never know what will happen the next moment.'
The Bombay high court will on Thursday hear a petition filed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena seeking permission to hold its annual Dussehra rally at the iconic Shivaji Park in central Mumbai on October 5.
A day after the Maharashtra cabinet expansion, the Shiv Sena claimed administering ministerial oath to rebels MLAs whose disqualification pleas are pending before the Supreme Court, amounted to murder of democracy and the Constitution.
Demanding action against those who allegedly put the image of the 18th-century Mysore ruler along with an offensive dialogue on their social media profiles, a group of right-wing activists held a protest on Tuesday. Police pacified them and told them to return.
Some of our leaders were busybusy over the weekend.
'Since September 1, a senior cabinet minister has been to-ing and fro-ing between Jalna and Mumbai by chartered flight every single day with messages from the two deputy chief ministers and the chief minister to get Manoj Jarange-Patil to back down from his agitation.'
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the petitions filed by the Shiv Sena and its rebel MLAs raise many constitutional questions which require consideration by a larger bench.
'The message the BJP is sending is that they are in no way responsible for Uddhav's downfall and it was only Shinde who is to be blamed.'
The approval by Maharashtra assembly Deputy Speaker Narhari Zirwal to appoint Ajay Choudhary as the Shiv Sena's group leader in the House in place of rebel leader Eknath Shinde may expedite the need for the ruling coalition to prove its majority through a floor test, feels a constitutional expert.
The Sharad Pawar-led NCP is just two short of the Sena's tally in the Upper House of the state legislature.
The Sena in its plea, filed through advocate Joel Carlos, said the party was holding the Dussehra rally every year at the Shivaji Park since 1966 and the civic body had always permitted it.
The Karnataka-Maharashta border row escalated into violence after vehicles from both states were attacked and damaged in Belgaon and Pune.
He also said that Chhatrapati Shivaji's life was all about revolting against the atrocities, and the fight for 'swaraj' (self-rule) started by him continues still today.
The former Congress president alleged that PM Modi had a "monopoly over corruption".
'Eknath Shinde and 40 other traitors have become slaves of Delhi (Centre) to finish off the Shiv Sena'