Bhopal: How numbers stack up in Madhya Pradesh Assembly

Bhopal: The Kamal Nath govt is staring at the possibility of facing a floor test to prove its majority in the Assembly, an uphill task given the fact that the difference between BJP and Congress tally is very thin.

Soon after the Rebel leader Jyotiraditya Scindia's resignation, 22 Congress MLAs loyal to him also sent their resignation letters to Speaker NP Prajapati.

The Madhya Pradesh assembly has a strength of 230 members. Two members have died since the Assembly elections were held in 2018. With this, the effective strength falls to 228 and the magic number required to form government is 115.

The Congress alone does not enjoy a majority in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly and has been in power with the support of the BSP (4 MLAs) and SP (1 MLA), taking its tally to 119.

However, if the resignation of the 19 Congress MLAs loyal to Scindia is accepted by Speaker NP Prajapati, the overall strength of the Assembly will fall to 209, and the magic number required to form the government will be 105.

In that scenario, the Congress would be left with just 95 MLAs, while the BJP would still be having 109 MLAs in the Assembly, a comfortable number to form the government.

The role of the Speaker becomes very important at this stage. As per law, an MLA who wishes to resign has to send his/her resignation to the Speaker.

The resignation becomes official only when the Speaker accepts it. Merely submitting a resignation letter doesn't make it official.

The power to disqualify lies with the Speaker. In a similar situation in Karnataka, the Speaker had ruled the dissident MLAs ineligible for the entire session.

Their right to contest election was however restored by the Supreme Court. But the top court interestingly upheld the Speaker's right to decide on the question of disqualification.