Unconstitutional To Not Have Deputy Speaker In Lok Sabha: Congress

The Congress on Sunday raised the issue of the Lok Sabha having no deputy speaker for about four years and claimed that this was "unconstitutional".

The Opposition party's assertion comes after the Supreme Court last month sought the Centre's response on a PIL that questioned the non-election of a deputy speaker in Lok Sabha and several state assemblies and observed that the issue was "very important".

"For the last four years, there has been no deputy speaker in the Lok Sabha. This is unconstitutional," Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a tweet.

"What a far cry from March 1956 when Nehru proposed the name of Sardar Hukam Singh an opposition Akali Dal MP and a critic of Nehru for the post and he was unanimously elected," he said.

Article 93, which deals with the speaker and deputy speaker of the House of the People, reads: "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 the speaker or deputy speaker becomes vacant, the House shall choose another member to be a speaker or deputy speaker, as the case may be."

The post of deputy speaker, which according to convention usually goes to the main opposition party, is vacant in Lok Sabha since June 23, 2019.

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