After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Mahayuti's landslide victory in Maharashtra, BJP's Rahul Narwekar has been reappointed as the Speaker of the state Assembly.
A confidante of CM Devendra Fadnavis, the incumbent MLA from Mumbai's Colaba was elected unopposed as the Speaker on Wednesday, 9 December. Appointed to the post first in July 2022, Narwekar was picked by the saffron party despite being a first-time MLA then.
The leader, however, is known for delivering two key verdicts in his first stint, as mandated by the Supreme Court, to determine the 'rea Shiv Sena' and the 'real NCP' after the split of the parties.
Who is Rahul Narwekar?
The incumbent speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly Rahul Narwekar was a first-time BJP legislator from Mumbai's Colaba Assembly constituency when he was first appointed to the post on 3 July 2022.
The legislator became the second-youngest person in the country to be elected speaker of any state at the age of 46 then; the youngest being Shivraj Patil, aged 42.
Narwekar has been associated with all three of Maharashtra's major political parties, including Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party, and the BJP.
He began his political career with Shiv Sena and progressed through the ranks to become a spokesperson for the Yuva Sena, the party’s youth wing led by Uddhav Thackeray's son Aaditya Thackeray.
He quit Shiv Sena ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and joined the NCP. He stood as an NCP candidate from the Maval constituency and lost to Shiv Sena candidate Shrirang Appa Barne. He joined the BJP prior to the 2019 Assembly elections, in which he defeated Congress candidate Ashok Jagtap.
The politician is a lawyer by profession and the son-in-law of NCP leader and former Maharashtra Legislative Council chairman Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar.
Narwekar was appointed as the speaker a year after Nana Patole resigned to become Maharashtra Congress president, leaving the position vacant.
It is pertinent to note that Narwekar was elected speaker a day before the Eknath Shinde government faced and subsequently won the floor test in the 288-member Assembly.
The Speaker Who Decided 'Real' Sena & NCP
A five-judge Constitution bench of the apex court on 11 May, 2023, had pronounced its verdict on the political crisis that led to the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government.
For context, Eknath Shinde, the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra along with 39 MLAs, rebelled against the Shiv Sena leadership, and engineered a split within the party which led to the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. After winning a floor test, Shinde joined forces with the BJP and took over as the CM.
The Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena then sought the disqualification of 16 of these rebel MLAs, who were the first ones to go incommunicado.
The Supreme Court, in its judgment had said that the speaker must decide on the disqualification of the 16 MLAs within a 'reasonable' period.
Of the 16 legislators facing disqualification, one was Chief Minister Shinde himself.
On 10 January, 2023, Narwekar announced his verdict on the matter of disqualification of Shiv Sena MLAs and ruled that Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's party was the real Shiv Sena when two factions emerged in June 2022. Narwekar rejected disqualification petitions against MLAs of both sides, citing "no material evidence" produced by either sides for the same.
Citing paragraph 21A under the 10th Schedule, Narwekar also said that the petitions to disqualify leaders of the Shinde faction over the reasons of going incommunicado cannot be accepted.
Over a year later in February 2024, Narwekar delivered the verdict on 'real NCP' in similar lines.
With Narwekar's appointment, the BJP has bagged the Speaker's post, the position that was demanded by both its allies Shiv Sena and NCP during discussions of portfolio distribution.
With the cabinet expansion followinng the oath ceremony of CM Devendra Fadnavis and deputy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, it remains to be seen which party bags the other key portfolios. While the Sena is keen on getting the home ministry and revenue, the NCP is said to be staunch on the demand of finance ministry for Ajit Pawar.