Stage is set for the Lok Sabha Speaker Election between Om Birla and K Suresh
The stage is set for the election of a Lok Sabha Speaker after three decades. On one side is BJP's Om Birla, a three-time MP and the Speaker in the last Lok Sabha. His challenger is the Congress's eight-time MP K Suresh.
In the 543-member House, seven MPs have not taken oath yet and the Wayanad seat is vacant. This means 535 MPs are eligible to vote today, and 268 is the majority mark.
NDA candidate Mr Birla is the frontrunner and has the support of 293 MPs, including 240 of the BJP, TDP's 16 and JDU's 12. The YSR Congress has announced that its four MPs will support Mr Birla. That makes it 297. BJP sources said they are also reaching out to Akali Dal's Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Independent MP Chandrashekhar Azad and Voice of the People Party's Ricky Andrew J Syngkon to take its tally to the 300 mark.
Mr Suresh, on the other hand, has the support of 232 MPs, including the Congress's 98, Samajwadi Party's 37, Trinamool's 29 and DMK's 21.
This is only the third time after Independence that an election for the Lok Sabha Speaker's post is being held. The Speaker is generally chosen with consensus. This time, the government had reached out to Opposition parties for their support. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge responded that it will support the NDA candidate if the Deputy Speaker is appointed from the Opposition benches.
The government, however, made it clear that they are not considering a Deputy Speaker post, or the Opposition's claim to it, for now. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju has criticised the Congress for setting conditions. "We appealed to them for support for the Speaker, but they said that they would support it but that they wanted the post of Deputy Speaker. We told them that the process of election for both posts is different. The process for choosing the Speaker is conducted before the Deputy Speaker. So it is not right to combine both."
Congress's Rahul Gandhi, set to be the Leader of the Opposition, has said, "Rajnath Singh called Mallikarjun Kharge and asked him to extend support... entire Opposition said we will support but convention is Deputy Speaker should be from our side. Rajnath Singh said he would call back... but he has not yet...PM is asking for cooperation but our leader is getting insulted."
It must be noted that the Deputy Speaker's post, traditionally given to an Opposition MP, was vacant in the last Lok Sabha. In the one before that, the BJP had named its ally AIADMK's M Thambi Durai.