Unprecedented public parade of 162 Sena-NCP-Congress MLAs

In an unpredecented action in Indian politics, the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress combine on Monday organised a public parade of their 162 supporting MLAs in a bid to disprove the claims of 170 legislators made by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally Ajit Pawar.

The parade, at which comes barely 12 hours before the scheduled hearing in the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning on the parties' challenge to the new government sworn-in early Saturday morning with Devendra Fadnavis as Chief Minister and Ajit Pawar as Deputy CM, creating a political upheaval in the state.

Besides the enthusiastic 162 MLAs of the three 'Maha Vikas Aghadi' partners, top leaders of all three parties like Sharad Pawar, Supriya Sule, Praful Patel and Nawab Malik, Jitendra Awhad (all Nationalist Congress Party), Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray, Eknath Shinde, and Sanjay Raut (all Shiv Sena), Ashok Chavan, Prithviraj Chavan and Mallikarjuna Kharge (Congress) and others were present.

Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party was also at the parade.

This public parade, including a joint photo-session, comes a day after the top leaders of the three parties address 'cross-meetings' of the legislators of each other's parties, again a unique development in politics.IANS