New Delhi: While the 17th Lok Sabha ended its tenure without a Deputy Speaker, now nine months into the 18th Lok Sabha, the post continues to remain vacant.
In June, days after the 2024 Lok Sabha election results, during the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha, the Lok Sabha saw an election for the post of the Speaker for the first time in decades when Congress legislator K. Suresh filed his nomination as the INDIA bloc candidate after negotiations for the post of the deputy speaker between the government and the opposition fell through.
Suresh had then 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. Ultimately, Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) MP Om Birla was elected Speaker for the second time, with the post of the Deputy Speaker remaining vacant.
‘They are not filling it is because it has to be given to the opposition’
Speaking to The Wire, Manickam Tagore, Congress MP and party whip in the Lok Sabha, said that the only reason that the Deputy Speaker’s post remains vacant is because it has to be given to the opposition.
“It has become a norm in Narendra Modi’s government that they don’t want to fill the constitutional posts. They want the constitutional posts to remain vacant. Deputy Speaker is an important position in parliament and the reason they are not filling it is because it has to be given to the opposition. And if they follow the convention it will have to be given to the Congress party,” he said.
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, with the Congress having 99.
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.
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 Article 95(1), while the Speaker’s office is vacant, its duties will be performed by the Deputy Speaker. Article 95(2) states that during the absence of the Speaker from any sitting of the House of the People the Deputy Speaker or, if he is also absent, such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of the House, or, if no such person is present, such other person as may be determined by the House, shall act as Speaker.
Panel of Chairpersons presiding over sittings of House in absence of Speaker
While the Deputy Speaker’s post has remained vacant, Birla in July named a Panel of Chairpersons. According to parliamentary rules, in the absence of the speaker and the deputy speaker, one of them presides over the sittings of the house.
At present the panel of chairpersons include-Jagdambika Pal (BJP), P.C. Mohan (BJP), Sandhya Ray (BJP), Dilip Saikia (BJP), Kumari Selja (Congress), A Raja (DMK), Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar (TMC), Krishna Prasad Tenneti (TDP) and Awadhesh Prasad (SP).
“Constitutionally, the Deputy Speaker should be there. But since the House has a long list of senior members (who comprise the panel of Chairmen) it does not affect anything in practice,” said Faizan Mustafa, constitutional law expert and vice-chancellor of Chanakya National Law University, Patna.
Also Read: Om Birla’s Unenviable Track Record as Speaker
With the second half of the Budget Session due to start next week, the post of the Deputy Speaker continues to remain vacant even as the newly formed Delhi government has named a Deputy Speaker within days of government formation.
When asked if the Congress will take up the matter in the upcoming parliament session, Tagore said that the government does want to follow the process.
“We have always been taking this up with the government but it is not ready to do the process. The 17th Lok Sabha ended its term without a Deputy Speaker,” he said.
The Wire has reached out to the BJP for a comment, this report will be updated once a comment is received.
