The floor test for the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh to prove its majority in the Assembly will be held at 2.00pm on Friday.
Late-night activities continued in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, which has been facing a political crisis for the past two weeks.
The agenda for the floor test, as directed by the two-justice bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday evening, was issued at 1.30am on Friday by Assembly principal secretary A.P. Singh.
Meanwhile, Speaker N.P. Prajapati accepted the resignations of 16 rebel Congress MLAs around 11.30pm on Thursday. The rebel MLAs are still in Bengaluru and had refused to participate in the floor test.
The acceptance of these resignations brings down the strength of the house to 206 and the majority mark will be 104. The Congress now has 91 members, excluding the speaker, and probable support of four independent legislators, one SP MLA and two BSP members. The ruling dispensation will still be short of the majority mark by six. The BJP has 107 MLAs, of whom 106 were paraded before the governor on March 16.
Rumours of resignation
Chief Minister Kamal Nath, meanwhile, has convened a press conference at 12.00pm on Friday. As the news of press conference came much before the floor test agenda was released by the Assembly Secretariat, rumours started making rounds that Kamal Nath might resign alone or with all Congress members rather than face the floor test.
However, the release of floor test agenda sought to quell the rumours.
Meanwhile, there were also rumours that BJP MLA Sharad Kol who had voted with Congress government on an earlier occasion, had resigned and his resignation was accepted.
As the agenda release was delayed, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former chief minister and petitioner in the Supreme Court, wrote a letter to the speaker, demanding implementation of the apex court order. Later, leader of opposition Gopal Bhargava visited the offices of the speaker and principal secretary of Assembly at midnight and left copies of the Supreme Court order and demand letter for implementation on their tables.