Leaders at an all-party meeting on Maratha quota chaired by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Wednesday passed a resolution asking activist Manoj Jarange to call off his indefinite fast.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde camp's MLAs, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and others held a meeting on Saturday night after the legislators returned to Mumbai.
The Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has issued a whip to "all" its legislators to remain present full-time during the budget session of the Maharashtra legislature which began on Monday, in an apparent move to corner the faction headed by former CM Uddhav Thackeray.
With organisations like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which is a front of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, telling Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman they want OPS back, the government is in a bind, report Shiva Rajora and Aditi Phadnis.
Thackeray said that he is ready to answer all questions raised by former chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Devendra Fadnavis as he is not 'scared' of anything.
So worried is Shiv Sena rebel leader Eknath Shinde of desertions that he is asking rebel MLAs in Guwahati to sign affidavits affirming that they won't go back on supporting the 'cause of Hindutva' after reaching Mumbai.
Shinde said his new deputy Ajit Pawar has chosen the path of development and expressed his faith in the leadership of Modi.
In a startling repeat of the manoeuvres made by Bharatiya Janata Party members of Legislative Assembly in Karnataka to unseat the government of former Chief Minister Sadanand Gowda, over 40 Maharashtra Congress legislators raised a similar demand against Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday, saying he needed to go if he couldn't alter his way of functioning.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led regime is performing a veritable balancing act. The lack of coordinated strategies, the weakening authority of the leadership, growing disgruntlement among its constituents, the inability to set a narrative, and poor damage control mechanisms have seen it lurch from one crisis to another, reports Dhaval Kulkarni
"We are here together for people of Maharashtra. A government was formed in the state without a majority. Karnataka, Goa, and Manipur, BJP didn't have majority anywhere but formed a government," said the NCP chief.
Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi on Monday described Marathi as his mother and Hindi as his grandmother, and said he was learning the local language out of respect and not fear. "Marathi is like mother for me, but Hindi is like my grandmother. I am learning Marathi. (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief) Raj Thackeray should not think that I am learning the language out of his fear," he said.
The two rival Senas took over each other a day after the party's 57th foundation day celebrations which saw Thackeray and Shinde holding separate events in Mumbai and trading charges.
Senior Shiv Sena leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Manohar Joshi's residence was ransacked in Mumbai on Sunday by some party workers, who were agitated over the neglect of their favourite local leader, during ticket allocation for the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections. According to sources, the outrage was over the demand of ticket to the sitting Member of Legislative Assembly of Dadar constituency.Joshi was not present in the house.
Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde's faction on Thursday told the Supreme Court that pleas related to the June 2022 Maharashtra political crisis fell within the realm of politics and judiciary cannot be asked to adjudicate the issue.
Announcing a Re 1 crop insurance scheme for farmers, the deputy CM said the government will bear the financial burden of Rs 3,312 crore.
Soon after being removed as Nationalist Congress Party working president, Praful Patel on Monday evening announced the appointment of Lok Sabha MP Sunil Tatkare as the party's state unit chief , replacing Jayant Patil, and Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar as its legislature wing leader.
'Approaching the SC, getting a favourable decision and overturning the situation (the speaker's order), will be too much to ask for in too short time.'
The TDP and JD-U will have a lot to answer inside Parliament, day after day, session after session, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Besides the national capital, polling will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, polling will be held for 42 assembly constituencies in Odisha.
Under attack for alleged corruption in the construction of Maharashtra Sadan and money laundering charges against his family members, Maharashtra PWD Minister Chhagan Bhujbal said he was contemplating defamation suit against those maligning him.
The Congress in Maharashtra is making all efforts to woo the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena to back United Progressive Alliance nominee Pranab Mukherjee for the presidential poll on Thursday.
The crime branch's probe into the assault on a police officer inside the Maharashtra assembly premises by members of Legislative Assembly has hit a roadblock after the Government said the CCTV footage of the incident was inconclusive and those involved in the attack have not been clearly identified.
Meet the richest and poorest candidates contesting the election to the richest civic body in the country.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The rules for the CAA are likely to be issued before the MCC comes into effect, sources privy to the development said.
NCP leaders Ajit Pawar, Chhagan Bhujbal, Congress leaders and former chief ministers Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj and former speakers Dilip Walse Patil (NCP) and Haribhau Bagade of the Bharatiya Janata Party were among the members to take oath early.
A statement from Raj Bhavan said that Koshyari requested the ECI to declare elections to the nine vacant seats of the Maharashtra Legislative Council 'at the earliest'. The state cabinet had on April 9 recommended Thackeray's nomination as one of the governor nominees in the Legislative Council.
The winter session of Maharashtra assembly began on a stormy note on Monday with Opposition parties joining ranks to criticise re-induction of senior Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar as deputy chief minister.
'How can we tolerate if a Constitutionally-appointed governor acts in violation of the Constitution?'
Even as the rescuers are braving hostile weather and difficult terrain for the third day to look for signs of life under the mound of debris at Malin village in Pune, Suresh Talekar, a Pune-based activist has charged the agriculture department officials of culpable homicide, and has filed a complaint at the Ghodegaon police station.
Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal told a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud that Koshyari had sworn in Shinde without even asking him which party he and the other legislators supporting him belonged to.
Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Wednesday claimed there was a threat to the life of party Member of Legislative Assembly Abu Asim Azmi, who was assaulted by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena members in the Maharashtra assembly for taking oath in Hindi defying Raj Thackeray's diktat.
'These frequent political visits to the governor's residence show the state and the office of the governor in bad light.'
The Maharashtra government, yielding to pressure and announcing that the Special Investigation Team will probe into the Rs 70,000 crore irrigation scam is a welcome step.
Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde could not have been sworn in as the chief minister of Maharashtra if the assembly speaker was not restrained from deciding the disqualification petitions pending against 39 MLAs, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday.
Describing female foeticide as a "social crime", Maharashtra Government on Thursday said it wanted a ban on stand-alone and mobile sonography units, and had urged Centre to make requisite amendments in the law in this regard.
'You can wake up a person who is sleeping, but how do you wake up a person who's pretending to sleep.'
Shiv Sena leader Anil Desai, in a recent communication to the poll panel, has urged it to give Shiv Sena a hearing in case of claims to the party's election symbol -- bow and arrow.
"Just bargaining was going on over what he (Ajit) should be getting. As per our information, he has been given a promise of chief minister's post by pushing Eknath Shinde aside with the help of Assembly speaker's decision (on disqualification of 16 Shiv Sena MLAs)," the former CM claimed.
The elections will determine the fate of the Sena in Konkan.
