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Journalism of Courage
In a speech that he delivered in the Maharashtra Assembly after being elected unopposed as the Deputy Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly in March 2020, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLA Narhari Zirwal mentioned that his habit of holding his phone to his ear had caused a hearing impairment in his left ear.
Two years down the line, however, in the midst of an unprecedented turmoil roiling the Shiv Sena and the Sena-led Maha Vikash Aghadi government, sections of the Sena rebels as well as the BJP seem to be having doubts on whether Zirwal would give a fair hearing to the rebel MLAs whom he has issued disqualification notices.
The entire episode has put the spotlight on the 63-year-old tribal leader Zirwal, who is a three-time NCP legislator from Dindori in Nashik district. He had started his political innings in 1980s from his home turf in Nashik as an activist of the Janata Dal, which had then a significant support base in the tribal belts there.
Zirwal later took the plunge into electoral politics and won two terms in the local Panchayat Samiti on the tickets of the Janata Dal as well as the Congress party. He subsequently joined the NCP and went on to win the Assembly election from the Dindori constituency for the first time in 2004. He had lost the 2009 election to a Shiv Sena candidate by just 149 votes.
Known to be close to the Deputy Chief Minister and senior NCP leader, Ajit Pawar, Zirwal also unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections twice on the NCP ticket.
A soft-spoken man with a good grasp of agricultural and tribal issues, Zirwal shot into limelight in the wake of a botched coup in November 2019 attempted by Ajit Pawar when he joined hands with the senior BJP leader and ex-CM Devendra Fadnavis to form their government in Maharashtra in a dramatic night-long operation. Zirwal was among those NCP MLAs who had accompanied Ajit Pawar to the Raj Bhavan for the secret early morning swearing-in ceremony there in which Fadnavis was administered the oath by Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari as the CM along with Ajit as his deputy.
Zirwal had then, however, soon returned from the Gurgaon hotel where he was kept along with other MLAs and rejoined the Sharad Pawar-led NCP camp. He had earlier told The Indian Express that he had decided to reach out to the NCP leadership and asked them to make arrangements for his “rescue” after he realised the political turmoil in the state following Ajit’s actions.
“After my parents, Sharad Pawar is the one who has played a formative role in my life. I can’t betray him. When we realised the fiasco in Maharashtra, I and the other party legislators talked and decided to head back. We called up NCP leaders who assured us that we will be extracted and we managed to leave the hotel on Sunday,” Zirwal had then told the Express.
Nearly four months after the MVA government was formed in Maharashtra through the collaboration between the Sena, NCP and Congress, Zirwal was elected unopposed as the Deputy Speaker of the state Assembly.
In February 2021, the post of the Assembly Speaker fell vacant after the Speaker Nana Patole, a Congress legislator, resigned from his position and became the state Congress president. Thereafter, as per Rule 9 of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Rules, 1960, Deputy Speaker Zirwal started discharging the duties of the Speaker in the House.
The MVA government had since been proposing to hold the elections to the post of the Speaker, which has however not taken place so far. This has made Zirwal a key player in the political drama playing out in the state. Since the rebellion led by senior Sena minister Eknath Shinde broke out against the dispensation led by the Chief Minister and Sena president, Uddhav Thackeray, Zirwal has issued disqualification notices to 16 rebel Sena MLAs including Shinde, on the Thackeray-led Sena’s request.
Zirwal has also cleared the appointment of Ajay Chaudhary as the Sena leader in the Assembly by replacing Shinde from the position.
