President Droupadi Murmu has once again violated a well-established parliamentary practice of appointing the senior-most member as the protem speaker of the newly elected Lok Sabha. On June 21, she appointed Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bhartruhari Mahtab, a six-term member of the House who has been elected for the seventh time, over Congress’s Kodikunnil Suresh, who has already served 8 terms.
Earlier, Murmu broke with convention and the precedents set by former Presidents R. Venkataraman and K.R. Narayanan when she invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to form a government without ascertaining if he had been elected as the leader of the NDA and without asking him to seek a vote of confidence within a stipulated time frame.
When the Congress criticised Murmu’s decision about the protem speaker, parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju made a strange claim that while Mahtab was Lok Sabha MP for six consecutive terms, Suresh wasn’t. Therefore, in spite of Suresh’s seniority, he was not chosen as the protem speaker.
The President’s power to appoint a Lok Sabha member as the speaker protem comes from Article 95(1) of the Constitution. It provides that when the office of the speaker and deputy speaker is vacant, the President may appoint a member of the Lok Sabha who would act for the purpose of functioning as the speaker.
The speaker protem, who takes oath as a member of Lok Sabha before the president at Rashtrapati Bhavan, administers the oath to newly elected members of Lok Sabha and conducts the election of the speaker. Therefore, as soon as the speaker is elected and assumes office to preside over the proceedings of the Lok Sabha, the term of the speaker protem comes to an end.
Well established parliamentary practice
The book Practice and Procedure of Parliament, authored by two former secretary generals of Lok Sabha, M. N. Kaul and S.L. Shakdher, throws light on the issues concerning protem speaker. In its 2016 edition, the chapter ‘President in Relation to Parliament’ clearly states that “It has been an established practice that the senior-most member in the newly constituted House is appointed as Speaker pro tem and he remains in office till the election of new Speaker by the House”.
It does not state that the senior-most member of the House should be determined by the consecutive terms a member has been elected to the House. Therefore, Rijiju’s reasoning is against the well-established parliamentary practice which he should have followed by virtue of being the parliamentary affairs minister.
Cuttack Lok Sabha seat BJP candidate Bhartruhari Mahtab during campaign trail. Photo: X (Twitter)/@BhartruhariM.
The book also states: “The name of a member to be appointed as Speaker pro tem is suggested by the Prime Minister, who, in his discretion may place the matter before the Cabinet. Normally the senior-most member of the Lok Sabha is chosen for appointment, as the Speaker protem, and orders of the President for such appointment, as per practice so far followed after each General Election, are taken by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs and forwarded to Lok Sabha Secretariat for notification.”
Past protem speakers
On May 15, 1952, then President Rajendra Prasad appointed B. Das, the senior-most member of Lok Sabha, as speaker protem and he occupied the Chair till the election of G.V. Mavalankar as the Lok Sabha speaker.
Later, Seth Govind Das was appointed to the post in 1957, 1962, 1967 and 1971. D.N. Tiwary, as the senior-most member of the Lok Sabha, was the protem speaker in 1977. In 1980 and 1985, Jagjivan Ram became protem speaker, followed by N.G. Ranga in 1989. Indrajit Gupta, by virtue of his seniority, served as speaker protem in 1991, 1996, 1998 and 1999.
After the 14th Lok Sabha was constituted in 2004, Somnath Chatterjee was appointed as speaker protem. When Chatterjee was picked to occupy the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil replaced him as the speaker protem.
Manikrao Hodlya Gavit was appointed as speaker protem in 2009. In 2014, the senior-most MP, Congress leader Kamal Nath, was chosen as speaker protem, and in 2019, BJP’s Virender Kumar was selected for the role. All of them were the longest-serving members of the Lok Sabha at the time of their appointments. Therefore, Mahtab’s appointment, in lieu of Suresh, is a violation of the established parliamentary practice.
The president should have been more circumspect to adhere to the precedents and conventions before appointing Mahtab as protem speaker. It does not bode well for our democracy and parliament, when the Modi government, as part of the NDA alliance, begins its tenure by wilfully violating such well-established parliamentary practices.
S.N. Sahu served as officer on special duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.
Note: The article has been edited to reflect that D.N. Tiwary was the senior-most member at the time of his appointment as protem speaker in 1977.
