Rahul Narwekar elected unopposed as Maharashtra assembly speaker. All you need to know

Rahul Narwekar has been elected unopposed as the Speaker of Maharashtra Assembly on Monday. Narwekar is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from the Colaba constituency. 

He is taking charge as the Speaker for a second consecutive term. The decision was taken by protem speaker Kalidas Kolambkar. Rahul Narwekar filed his nomination for the post alone since the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) did not field any candidate. 

Who is Rahul Narwekar? 

He is the second youngest person to be elected as the speaker of any state assembly, the youngest being former Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. While Narwekar was elected as the Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly at 44 years, Patil was elected to the same post at 42. 

Rahul Narwekar is the son-in-law of veteran NCP leader Ramraje Naik Nimbalkar. His father Suresh Narwekar was a Municipal Councilor from the Colaba area whereas his brother Makarand is a second-term Municipal Councilor. 

His sister-in-law Harshita Narwekar is also a Municipal Councilor on a BJP ticket from the Cuffe Parade area.

Narwekar was a member of the undivided Shiv Sena from 1999-2014. In 2014, he joined the undivided NCP after being a Lok Sabha ticket by Shiv Sena. He unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election on an NCP ticket from the Maval constituency. 

In 2016, he was elected to the Maharashtra's Legislative Council as Governor's Nominated member. In 2019, he joined the BJP and was elected as the MLA from Colaba for the first time. 

In 2022, he was elected as the Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly for the first time. In 2023, he was tasked by the Supreme Court to decide on the disqualification petitions of 34 MLAs from the two factions of the Shiv Sena that emerged after the party split in 2022.

He ruled that the breakaway factions of the Shiv Sena under Eknath Shinde and NCP under Ajit Pawar were the real parties. Following his ruling, the name and symbol of the erstwhile undivided parties was allotted to Shinde and Ajit Pawar, respectively. 

At present, he is also heading a committee to look into the consitutional provisions that deal with defection of MLAs and MPs in the anti-defection law. 

In 2024, Narwekar contested from Colaba for the second time and won by a massive margin of 48,581 votes. In his 2024 assembly election affidavit, Rahul Narwekar mentioned that his assets stood at ₹129.81 crore, up from ₹38.09 crore in 2019 and ₹10 crore in 2014.