SC agrees to hear pleas of Anil Deshmukh & Nawab Malik to vote in floor test

|HT|

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear pleas by jailed Maharashtra MLAs Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, who have sought permission to vote in Thursday morning's floor test. They will be heard after the Uddhav Thackeray government's challenge to governor BS Koshyari's decision to hold the test. Both Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik are behind bars after being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with money laundering cases. Malik was arrested in February over a case against fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and his associates, while Deshmukh was arrested in November after being linked to an alleged ₹100 crore extortion and money laundering case.

Both Deshmukh and Malik had also moved the court seeking bail to vote in this month's legislative council elections, but their pleas were turned down. The Bharatiya Janata Party claimed five of 10 seats in that election - amid claims of cross-voting by Shiv Sena and Congress leaders.

The Maharashtra governor ordered a floor test to check the majority status of the Sena-led ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi government. Koshyari called the present political scenario 'disturbing' and referred to reports that as many as 39 Shiv Sena MLAs had expressed a 'sincere desire and decision to exit the Maha Vikas Aghadi government'. His decision was swiftly countered by the Sena which approached the Supreme Court arguing that its own interim order - regarding a stay on disqualification proceedings against Shinde and 15 rebel MLAs till July 12 - is being misused.

The court agreed to an emergency hearing at 5 pm. The Sena faces an uncertain future given the numbers in the Shinde camp; he claims to have 50 MLAs on his side, which is more than enough to bring down the MVA government. Shinde also claims to have 40 Sena MLAs on his side. "We are not worried about the floor test. We have a strength of 50 legislators (including independents). We will pass the test because in a democracy numbers are supreme in a majority," Shinde declared.

The Sena is equally confident about its chances and believes that at least 20 of the rebel MLAs, in fact, want to come back and can be persuaded to do so once the return to Mumbai. The rebels are expected in the city tomorrow.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)