Eknath Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray camps set to clash over speaker’s election now

The Maha Vikas Aghadi has decided to field Rajan Salvi, a Shiv Sena MLA from the Uddhav Thackeray camp, for the speaker’s post in Maharashtra.

Salvi will contest against BJP MLA Rahul Narvekar, a joint BJP-Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) group candidate.

The move could spell a fresh confrontation between the Shinde group and the Thackeray camp as the latter has indicated that it would issue a whip to get all Shiv Sena MLAs, including the 16 in its fold, to vote for Salvi.


Shinde group spokesperson Deepak Kesarkar said on Friday that since the faction had twothirds of the legislative party members, it would issue a whip and expect all Sena MLAs (including the 16 from the Thackeray camp) to obey it whenever there was any voting in the legislative assembly.

Kesarkar said a failure to do so could make the grouping take up disqualification proceedings against the 16 MLAs, including Thackeray’s son, Aaditya.

Shiv Sena leader from the Thackeray camp, Anil Desai, told ET that his camp, too, would issue a whip and expected all Sena MLAs to vote for Narvekar.

“The case is in the Supreme Court; however, we will initiate disqualification proceedings if the Shiv Sena MLAs do not vote in our favour,” Desai said.