
Amongst bigger states, after Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, the Maharashtra post-poll alliance named Maha-Vikas Aghadi between Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress has fell prey to defection. Shiv Sena won 55 seats in the 2019 Legislative Assembly elections in Maharashtra and formed a post-poll alliance with the NCP and the Congress to form the government under the leadership of Shiv Sena party supremo, Uddhav Thackeray. However, after an internal rift, senior Shiv Sena party leader Eknath Shinde along with 40 MLA’s split from the Shiv Sena and formed the government with the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)—with which Shiv Sena had a pre-poll alliance, and Eknath Shinde took oath as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra on 30th June 2022 by winning the vote of confidence of 164 MLA’s out of 288 in the floor test.
Continue reading “Guest Post: Maharashtra Political Crises, Anti-Defection Law and the Supreme Court”