New Delhi: In the first instance of a stripped-back Bharatiya Janata Party facing a challenge from a stronger opposition in parliament, the post for the Lok Sabha Speaker will see an election for the first time in decades.
On June 25, Congress legislator K. Suresh filed his nomination as the INDIA bloc candidate to take on the National Democratic Alliance’s Om Birla after negotiations for the post of the deputy speaker between the government and the opposition fell through.
Speaking to reporters outside parliament, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi said that the Union minister for defence Rajnath Singh had called Congress president and Rajya Sabha MP Mallikarjun Kharge a day ago, on June 24.
“Yesterday evening Rajnath Singh ji called Kharge ji and requested that he support the Speaker candidate. Kharge ji said that we have spoken to the entire opposition on this. On behalf of the entire opposition, he said, we will support the Speaker, but he added that the convention has been that the Deputy Speaker should be from the opposition. Rajnath Singh ji said he will call him back [presumably to discuss the matter] but he still hasn’t called him back. Modi talks about cooperation but insults our leader. This shows that BJP’s intentions are not clear,” he said to reporters.
Union minister Piyush Goyal, however, said that Congress MP K.C. Venugopal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP T.R. Baalu had attempted to “dictate terms” in this imbroglio which led to the INDIA bloc deciding on not supporting the Speaker’s candidature without a decision on the Deputy Speaker.
“There is a system in place by which the Speaker was to be decided and NDA leaders unanimously agreed on Om Birla for the post. In the morning [of June 25] as well, Rajnath Singh tried to speak to Kharge ji but he [Kharge] was busy and said that Venugopal ji will speak instead. When we spoke to Venugopal and Baalu, they showed an old mentality of attempting to dictate terms. They stipulated that we have to first decide as to who will be the Deputy Speaker, and only then will they support the Speaker. We condemn such politics,” Goyal told reporters.
“It would have been good if we kept to the tradition that the Speaker is elected unanimously. The Speaker does not belong to any party but to the whole House and similarly the Deputy Speaker also belongs to the whole House and not to any party. That is why the entire House should agree on the decision, and not stipulate conditions of having the Deputy Speaker from only a particular party. This is against any tradition of the Lok Sabha,” Goyal added.
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.
Suresh said that the decision to contest for the Speaker’s post was taken because the government was not ready to give the opposition the Deputy Speaker’s post.
“It is not a number issue. It is for the convention of Lok Sabha. The post of Speaker goes to the ruling party and Deputy Speaker’s post to the opposition. But, the government is not ready to give us the post of Deputy Speaker. That’s why we are contesting,” he said.
While Om Birla, who was also the Speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha, when an unprecedented 146 opposition MPs were suspended from both houses of parliament, is likely to win, the post for the Speaker will see its first contest in decades. In 1946, Congress’s G.V. Mavalankar won the election for the post of the Central Legislative Assembly speaker against Cowasjee Jehangir by a margin of just three votes. In 1952, Congress candidate Mavalankar, who had been in the Speaker’s chair since 1946 faced Shankar Shantaram More, of the Peasants and Workers Party of India. Then, during the Emergency in 1976, the Congress’ Baliram Bhagat defeated the Jana Sangh’s Jagannathrao Joshi.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 240 seats on its own and has a total of 292 seats in the Lok Sabha along with its allies. The opposition has a total of 232 seats.
The Speaker’s election will take place tomorrow, June 26.
The contest for the Speaker’s post comes after the government and the opposition faced off over the appointment of the Protem Speaker.
Last week, seven-time MP Bhartruhari Mahtab of the BJP was appointed the Pro-Tem Speaker. Mahtab who switched over to the BJP from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) just prior to the elections was appointed by bypassing K. Suresh, who is an eight-time MP. By convention, the senior most member of parliament is made Pro-Tem Speaker until a regular speaker is appointed.
Facing criticism from the opposition, the BJP later justified the appointment with parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju stating that Mahtab had been MP eight times consecutively while Suresh’s eight terms had seen breaks in 2004 and 1998.
