The failure of 11 Congress MLAs, including former CM Ashok Chavan, to cast their vote in the floor test held on Monday led to raised eyebrows within the party with senior leaders raising concern and questioning their “recklessness” and “casual behaviour”.
While the MVA had polled 107 votes on Sunday during the Speaker’s election, the alliance’s tally fell to 99 on Monday.
Other than Chavan, those who did not cast their vote include Pranati Shinde, Jitesh Antapurkar, Vijay Waddetiwar, Zeeshan Siddiqui, Dheeraj Deshmukh, Kunal Patil, Raju Awale, Mohan Hambarde, Shirish Chaudhari and Madhavrao Javalgaonkar.
Even as their absence triggered a buzz that some of them might be “in touch with other parties”, a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra said: “The casual behaviour by this group of MLAs is very shocking. It shows their recklessness.”