The post for the Lok Sabha Speaker is seeing an election for the first time in decades – after negotiations for the post of the deputy speaker between the government and the opposition fell through. The opposition’s insistence on the post of the Deputy Speaker comes after the 17th Lok Sabha, in a first, ended with the post remaining empty. This article was originally published on February 2, 2024 and has been republished on June 26, 2024.
New Delhi: The 17th Lok Sabha will be the first to conclude its tenure without a deputy speaker, in a development that has been called “undemocratic” by opposition parliamentarians and unprecedented by experts.
The 10-day interim budget session which started on January 31 is the last sitting of the 17th Lok Sabha before it is adjourned ahead of the Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in April-May 2024.
Former Lok Sabha secretary general P.D.T. Achary said to The Wire that “there has never been a situation barring the present instance, where there has been no deputy speaker for the entire tenure of the Lok Sabha”.
“It is quite unlikely that the deputy speaker will be chosen by the house now. And there is no point now either. Deputy speaker is chosen along with the speaker and the practice has been to elect the speaker first and within a week’s time the deputy speaker will also be elected.”
Achary said that when it is a constitutionally mandated provision, it has to be adhered to.
“When there is a mandatory provision in the Constitution, the House has to abide by it. It is the House which has to elect the speaker as well as the deputy speaker. The proposal comes from the government. The speaker is from the ruling party and the convention has been that the deputy speaker will be from the opposition. While there is no written rule, sometimes the deputy speaker’s post has even been given to friendly opposition parties so they could have done the same.”
What the Constitution says
Article 93 of the Constitution states that the Lok Sabha needs to choose two members as the speaker and deputy speaker “as soon as may be”.
“The House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker thereof and, so often as the office of Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant, the House shall choose another member to be Speaker or Deputy Speaker, as the case may be,” it states.
According to the Statistical Handbook, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, the deputy speaker has been elected within a few weeks at the most. The longest it has taken till date to elect a deputy speaker was during the 12th Lok Sabha when it took 270 days to elect P.M. Sayeed as the deputy speaker when G.M.C. Balayogi was the speaker.
However, with just a week to go for Parliament to be adjourned sine dine, the 17th Lok Sabha will go down in history as the only one to have not had a deputy speaker for its entire tenure.
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According to The Indian Parliament, a book authored by former Lok Sabha secretary general T.K. Viswanathan, available on the Parliament Digital Library, the members of the Lok Sabha elect the deputy speaker from amongst themselves, who presides over the deliberations of the house during the absence of the speaker.
“The deputy Speaker is vested with the same powers as the Speaker when presiding over a sitting of the house. The deputy Speaker, on being the member of a Parliamentary Committee, is appointed as the Chairman of that Committee. He, unlike the Speaker, can speak in the house, take part in its deliberations and vote as a member on any question before the house, but he can do so only when the Speaker is presiding.”
Parliamentary rules also state that the speaker nominates ten members to the Panel of Chairmen. In the absence of the speaker and the deputy speaker, one of them presides over the sittings of the house.
The panel members of the 17th Lok Sabha included BJP’s Rama Devi, Kirit P. Solanki, and Rajendra Agrawal; Congress’s Kodikunnil Suresh; A. Raja of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam; P.V. Midhun Reddy of the YSRCP; Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Biju Janata Dal; N.K. Premachandran of the Revolutionary Socialist Party; and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar of the Trinamool Congress.
‘Undemocratic’
While it is not mandated by the Constitution, a parliamentary convention has developed over the years to choose a member of the opposition as the deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha.
The convention was first started by Jawaharlal Nehru who picked Sardar Hukum Singh of the Shiromani Akali Dal to be the deputy speaker in 1956. Subsequently, deputy speakers were from the ruling Congress until G.G. Swell, an independent member, was appointed during the Emergency years. Thereafter, members from the opposition have occupied the post, a convention that continued till the 16th Lok Sabha when the AIADMK’s M. Thambidurai was the deputy speaker.
According to opposition members, the BJP government has failed to appoint a deputy speaker because of this very convention of appointing a member from the opposition.
Congress’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha Kodikunnil Suresh said to The Wire that while the 16th Lok Sabha had a deputy speaker in the form of Thambidurai, he belonged to the AIADMK – an ally of the ruling BJP.
“In the 16th Lok Sabha Thambidurai was made the deputy speaker even though the AIADMK was an NDA partner. In the 17th Lok Sabha, the Congress had 54 members as the single largest opposition party. While the strength of the single largest opposition party has to be 56 to have a member as the deputy speaker, the Congress was two members short. But that is completely technical. If the government wants to give the deputy speaker post to the opposition party it can.
“But they have not given to the opposition party because they did not want to give to the Congress. The BJP government is not ready to give deputy speaker post to the opposition party and they have not followed parliamentary convention in both 16th and 17th Lok Sabha. They don’t want any constitutional posts to be given to the opposition party that is why it was not given,” he said.
Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, TMC MP in the Lok Sabha, said that the absence of a deputy speaker in the Lok Sabha is “marked” despite the fact that the 17th Lok Sabha has had many firsts.
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During the winter session, in a first, a total of 146 MPs were suspended from both houses of parliament.
“There are so many firsts in the 17th Lok Sabha out of which the absence of the deputy speaker is so marked. There is the explanation from the government side that the numbers in the opposition benches weren’t appropriate. But definitely something could have been done. Since the provision of the deputy speaker is there in the Constitution and we have been having one, it should have been prudent for the government to look at it more seriously and have a deputy speaker because that is the provision.
“It is undemocratic that the 17th Lok Sabha is nearing completion without this constitutional post being filled. There might be another thought behind it to make the opposition weaker, and not giving due respect to the opposition,” she said to The Wire.
Absence of deputy speaker
During the monsoon session last year in August, when Speaker Om Birla skipped the Lok Sabha proceedings as he was “upset” by the conduct of opposition members, members of the panel of chairpersons filled in, in the absence of a deputy speaker.
Similarly, in March 2020 members of the panel filled in again during the Budget session, when Birla skipped the proceedings for two days as he was “hurt” over the uproar in parliament.
In September 2020, when asked about opposition leaders asking about the deputy speaker election, Birla had said he doesn’t have to elect a person and it is for the House and the government to decide, reported PTI.
Last year, the The Indian Express reported citing BJP sources that there is no “immediate requirement” for a deputy speaker as “Bills are being passed and discussions being held”. The report also cited BJP sources and said there had been some discussion in the past about choosing members from friendly parties like the BJD or YSR Congress Party for the post.
The Wire has reached out to the BJP for a comment, and this article will be updated when a comment is received.
The absence of the deputy speaker in the Lok Sabha also reached court last year, when a Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, while hearing a petition, issued a notice to the Union government and five other assemblies – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Manipur.
The bench cited Articles 93 and 178, reminding the Union government that the election of a deputy speaker is mandatory and sought responses on their failure to elect a deputy speaker.
Achary said that not appointing the deputy speaker goes against constitutional provisions.
“They can say that absence of a deputy speaker has in no way affected the functioning of the house but then why is there a provision in the constitution? If it was optional it would be made so in the Constitution. But it is mandatory in the Constitution. When the constitution makes a mandatory provision it has to be adhered to,” he said.
