Shiv Sena fallout: 16 MLAs stay loyal to Uddhav Thackeray, scores settled for today’s floor test

Even as Eknath Shinde replaced Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister, there was uncertainty till Sunday’e Speaker elections over which of the remaining Shiv Sena MLAs would jump ship to the rebel camp.

However, the poll outcome indicated that the positions were settled for now with 16 MLAs finally standing by Sena president Uddhav Thackeray. This also decides who will vote for whom in the floor test today.

Below is the list of 16 MLAs who continue to back Thackeray:

Aaditya Thackeray

Chimamrao Patil

Rahul Patil

Santosh Bangar

Vaibhav Naik

Sunil Raut

Ravindra Waikar

Sunil Prabhu

Dilip Lande

Prakash Phaterpekar

Sanjay Potnis

Ajay Chaudhary

Kailas Patil

Bhaskar Jadhav

Rajan Salvi

Uday Samant

On Sunday, BJP’s Rahul Narvekar, who was elected as the Speaker, polled 164 votes, defeating Thackeray-led Shiv Sena candidate Rajan Salvi, who got 107 votes.

Going by the votes polled in the Speaker’s election, it seems the numbers are stacked in favour of the Shinde-BJP government for the floor test.

The 288-member Assembly has one vacancy due to the death of Sena’s Ramesh Latke. Out of the 287 legislators, 271 voted, while three MLAs – two of SP and one belonging to AIMIM- abstained from voting.

Of the 12 absentee MLAs, Laxman Jagtap and Mukta Tilak (both BJP) are suffering from serious ailments.

Two NCP legislators – Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik- are in jail in connection with different money laundering cases. Four other NCP MLAs did not show up. Two Congress MLAs – Praniti Shinde and Jitesh Antapurkar – also did not attend the session.