HC to hear on December 1 pleas challenging Maha govt formation

The Bombay High Court today fixed December 1 for hearing three petitions which challenged the formation of Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government in Maharashtra on the ground that it had failed to prove majority on the floor of Legislative Assembly.
The petitions, filed separately by former state minister Naseem Khan and two others, would be heard by a bench headed by Justice V M Kanade.
While Khan has filed a writ petition, the other two are Public Interest Litigations (PILs).
Meanwhile, another PIL on the same issue filed by activist Ketan Tirodkar was today transferred to the bench of Justice Vijaya Tahilramani and would be heard on December 8.

Khan, a sitting Congress MLA, raised a question whether a political party after an election, which admittedly is in a minority, can form government without actual voting in its favour in the Legislative Assembly.
Referring to the trust vote held on November 12, the petition said Assembly Speaker Haribhau Bagade had called for a 'voice vote' to decide whether the BJP government had a majority support and that the Speaker had not resorted to the normal practice of division (actual counting) of votes.

The petition submitted the action of the Speaker in declaring that BJP had a majority by a volume of voices is fundamentally subversive of the law declared by the Supreme Court. The apex court had stated in one of its judgements that floor test is compulsory to assess the strength of a ministry.

The Speaker's action is not only an irregularity of procedure but also a fundamental violation of the Constitution and basic principle of parliamentary government, it said.
The petition sought a direction from the court to the Chief Minister and his ministers to quit office contending they had no authority in law to form a government.
The petition said a voice vote does not determine the majority in the House as required under article 164(2) of the Constitution as the voice vote does not record how many votes were cast in favour of the motion and how many against and how many abstained.

It urged the court to strike down the voice vote obtained by the government as it was unconstitutional.