Pressurising Speaker to take a decision is against free and fair process: Devendra Fadnavis

Devendra Fadnavis statement comes soon after Uddhav Thackeray demanded the Speaker to take a decision on disqualifying 16 MLAs at the earliest.

Nagpur: Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said that the Supreme Court has granted full rights and sufficient time to Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar to make a decision.

Fadnavis said that if there is any attempt to pressurise the Speaker then it would be against a fair and free process. "The Speaker is a good lawyer. He will take a decision as per the law and at the right time", Fadnavis said while speaking to reporters in Nagpur. Earlier, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray had asked the Speaker to take a decision on disqualifying 16 MLAs at the earliest.

Reiterating his earlier statement, Fadnavis said that Thackeray has no right to preach about morality and ethics because it was he broke alliance with the BJP for the chief minister's post. Fadnavis said Thackeray won the elections with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's picture and then did away with the party's mission, policy and ideology for the post of the chief minister. "I don't understand with what face people like them are talking about morality. If they think the result is in their favour, they should beat the drum about it", Fadnavis said.

Responding to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar's statement on Supreme Court verdict, Fadnavis said that he had gone down history in order to teach morality to the BJP. When asked on whether Maharashtra government should resign, Pawar had told yesterday that the BJP and morality were contradictory to each other. Earlier in the day, NCP leader Ajit Pawar had said it was no use asking chief minister Eknath Shinde to resign because he would never do so. The present BJP is different from former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Pawar had added.

In its verdict on the political crisis in Maharashtra, the apex court had stated that the former Governor of the state was not justified in calling for a floor test on the request of Shinde faction.