Harish Rawat thanked all the lawmakers and his supporters in Uttarakhand after the floor test ended.
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The Supreme Court will pass an interim order at 4 pm on Monday on nine Congress MLAs, who were disqualified by the Uttarakhand assembly speaker, challenging a state high court order dismissing their plea against disqualification. But he has reasons to smile as sources claims that Congress has got 33 votes, a clear majority, in the Floor Test at Uttarakhand. Had it waited for a year, when the term of the incumbent Congress government would end, it would have been the beneficiary of the anti-incumbency vote.
Rawat was then asked by Governor KK Paul to prove his majority on March 28 but a day before that the central government ousted his government by imposing President’s Rule.
Congress leader Ambika Soni had said, “We have the numbers and will win the floor test without any difficulty”.
Terming Rawat’s conduct as “shameful”, he said that Congress is performing its “last rites” in the state as they have kept a leader who is “insulting his own party”.
The assembly proceedings were videographed on the order of the Supreme Court.
According to party insiders, the BJP is hopeful it may break the PDF, which has been a vocal supporter of Rawat, if the two BSP members help give it the desired number. All legislators, except for the nine disqualified MLAs of Congress were present in the House to participate in the vote of trust. Rawat said he is quite tied up because of the trust vote scheduled for Tuesday.
The Assembly will be out of bounds for the media and all legislators and officials have been barred from carrying mobile phones to the House during the crucial floor test.
Ganesh Joshi of BJP claimed that it was a constitutional victory for the BJP because nine MLAs of Congress had voted for the BJP in the past and now one more MLA has voted for BJP.
The court, which had earlier said that “Principal Secretary, Legislative Assembly”, Jaidev Singh would be present as a “neutral perceptionist” at the time of the voting on the confidence motion, now directed that the “principal secretary, legislative and parliamentary affairs who belongs to the cadre of the district judge shall remain present to conduct the affairs with perceptible objectivity and singularity of objective of neutrality along with the secretary, legislative assembly”.
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Twitter, of course, had a lot to say – as the Uttarakhand floor test has been the subject of front page news ever since President’s Rule was imposed in the state on March 27.
