Jitendra Awhad, chief whip of the NCP (Sharad Pawar camp), has written to the speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly to request separate seating arrangements for party members from the Ajit Pawar camp and the rest of the MLAs for the next legislative session, which will start on Monday.
Awhad said in a letter sent to Speaker Rahul Narwekar on Sunday that the Nationalist Congress Party is a member of the opposition, with the exception of the nine MLAs, including Ajit Pawar, who have joined the administration.
“The seating arrangement for others should be decided individually, with the exception of the nine MLAs who were sworn in. We want to sit in the opposition because the NCP is,” Awhad said. Narwekar recently said that, in the case of the Nationalist Congress Party, it was difficult to tell who was in charge and who wasn’t.
He had predicted that “there will be a lot of discussions and arguments over how to decide who represents the actual NCP.” When questioned about Shiv Sena, which had also had a similar uprising the previous year, Narwekar said, “The matter with Shiv Sena is resolved for me since the Election Commission of India (ECI) has delivered its ruling. I don’t have any updates from the NCP’s office, despite the fact that the NCP sent a letter to the ECI.
The NCP had 53 MLAs in the 288-member Assembly until Ajit Pawar and eight more MLAs joined the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition earlier this month. 35 NCP MLAs and five of the eight MLCs registered to attend Ajit Pawar’s first meeting in Mumbai since the party split. It is unknown how many MLAs specifically support the Ajit Pawar group.
