Speaker election: Pained by Maharashtra govt’s threatening language, says Governor
🔴 In his letter to the government, Koshiyari said he had taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and the Maha Vikas Aghadi's proposal for holding the Speaker's election seemed to be unconstitutional and illegal.
Tuesday, Koshyari had sent a letter to the government after which it decided to cancel the Speaker’s election. (File)
In the letter he sent to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray Tuesday, Maharashtra Governor B S Koshiyari said he was “pained” and “dismayed” over the “intemperate tone and threatening tenor” of a note sent to him by the state government over selection of the Speaker, and said it denigrated the high office he held.
The government had written to Koshiyari asking that elections be allowed by voice vote for the post of the Speaker, which has been vacant since the resignation of the Congress’s Nana Patole. After Koshiyari turned down the request in the letter sent on Tuesday – contents of which were revealed Wednesday – the election was cancelled. Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said they had done so keeping in mind the prestige of the Raj Bhavan, and that they would meet the Governor again with their request.
In his letter to the government, Koshiyari said he had taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s proposal for holding the Speaker’s election seemed to be unconstitutional and illegal.
With Acting Speaker Narhari Zhirwal presiding, the state government had changed rules to allow the selection of the Speaker by voice vote instead of a secret ballot.
The Governor said that the government had cited Article 208 of the Constitution, but that it clearly specifies that a House of the state legislature may make rules for regulating its conduct “subject to the provisions of this Constitution”.
Koshiyari also asked why it had taken the MVA government 11 months to start the process of choosing a Speaker, and said the impact of the “drastic” amendments in Assembly rules needed to be examined. As per the Maharashtra Assembly Rules, under Section 6 (3), elections should be held to the post of the Speaker if more than one member has been nominated “by ballot”. In July this year, the Rules Committee of the State Legislature made up of MLAs proposed that the Speaker be voted through a voice vote instead of a secret ballot.
The Governor said he had never questioned the prerogative of the House in the matter of its procedure/proceedings but he could not be pressured to give consent to a process “which prima facie appears to be unconstitutional and illegal, as enshrined in Article 208 of the Constitution”.
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Soon after the contents of the Governor’s letter became known, the Shiv Sena said it was not the MVA government but the Centre which was putting pressure on Koshiyari. Sena chief spokesperson and MP Sanjay Raut said: “For nearly one year, the Governor has not approved the nomination of 12 members to the Legislative Council. It is clear that he is under pressure to not approve the names. So, who is putting the pressure on the Governor? It is clear that the Central government is putting pressure on him to act as per its directives, to create a constitutional crisis in Maharashtra.”
State Industries Minister Subhash Desai of the Sena said, “If the Governor says he is unhappy, the government is also unhappy as he has refused to approve the names for the Legislative Council. The Governor should be acting on the advice of the Council of Ministers. But here he wants the government to act on his advice.”
Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe said, “The government has neither pressured the Governor nor done anything unconstitutional. The Governor seems to have misunderstood the contents of the letter sent to him by the government.”
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Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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