Mumbai: The Bombay High Court will today hear three petitions which challenge 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 today.
Former state Minister Nassem Khan and two others had separately filed petitions. They will be heard by a bench headed by justice V M Kanade.
While Khan, who is a sitting Congress MLA has filed a writ petition, the other two are Public Interest Litigations (PILs).
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 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 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.
