Om Birla is in the hot seat once again, even though was denied the sanctity of being elected unanimously. The Congress party's nominee K Suresh, an eight-term MP, challenged him in the election for the Lok Sabha Speaker post.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, and the Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju, escorted Birla to the chair of the Speaker after his victory.
The exercise, as is convention, asserts that the Speaker must uphold the rights of MPs, while also ensuring impartiality in conducting the businesses of the House.
Article 93 of the Constitution mandates an election for the post of Speaker and Deputy Speaker as soon as may be, but Birla failed to hold a poll for his deputy in the 17th Lok Sabha.
Birla’s First Test Lies in Neutrality and Adherence to the Constitution
Absolute neutrality is an accompanying feature of the Speaker. But political parties never came on board to evolve a system to ensure it.
While holding the post, Birla, like his predecessors, nurses his constituency and also works as a political worker. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fielded Birla from the Kota parliamentary constituency, and he sought votes in the name of Modi in the Lok Sabha elections.
In the next elections, he will once again be hopeful of getting a ticket from his current party to contest elections. The requirement of neutrality and the pulls of politics, thus, create a dichotomy for the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
The House Belongs to All
BJP stalwarts like the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the late Sushma Swaraj, and even the late Arun Jaitley, shined as parliamentary orators while being Opposition leaders. They thrived while Speakers of the day in both houses of Parliament truly followed the convention that “the Opposition should have its say and the government its way.”
Birla, thus, has several of the leading lights among his predecessors to look upon to find a way out to break the gridlock of enmity between the treasury and the Opposition benches.
He should discourage the practice of throwing out MPs who cause pandemonium, and he must allow the whistle of the pressure cooker to blow by allowing MPs to raise issues in an orderly manner in the House.
Zero Hour is Not the Touchstone of Parliamentary Democracy
Birla made his fame as the ‘Zero Hour’ Speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha.
He allowed MPs to raise issues from their respective parliamentary constituencies. The Lok Sabha worked late hours for the ‘Zero Hour’ in which MPs read out issues within a one-minute time limit.
But the touchstone of parliamentary democracy lies in the legislative scrutiny of the executive. The system of parliamentary standing committees is functionally responsible for the sharp legislative scrutiny of the executive.
The 16th and the 17th Lok Sabha saw 25 percent and 16 percent of the legislative bills referred to the parliamentary standing committees. In contrast, the 14th and the 15th Lok Sabha had seen 60 percent and 71 percent of the bills sent to parliamentary standing committees.
Also, the 17th Lok Sabha earned the scorn of those who assert that "Parliament is supreme." 58 percent of the bills were passed within 11 days of their introduction in the House.
Parliamentary standing committees look minutely into the affairs of the ministries and also examine legislative bills by holding extensive consultations with stakeholders. Strengthening the parliamentary standing committees is incumbent on the active intervention of the presiding officers.
Besides, it needs no elaboration to state that the standing committees headed by Opposition leaders bring greater accountability to the executive.
18th Lok Sabha Will Reflect People’s Mandate; Bulldozing Opposition Will Boomerang
The mandate of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will surely prevail in the functioning of the lower House of Parliament. The BJP does not have a majority.
The BJP and the Opposition may both attempt to march towards the halfway mark in the Lok Sabha using all the means available. The anti-defection law has already been tested in some of the states. Birla will be the man to watch out for when situations emerge in which there are attempts to change the numbers of the Lok Sabha.
The largest Opposition party in the 16th and the 17th Lok Sabha lacked the numbers to officially attain the status of "Opposition". That has now changed. The Congress ranks in the Lok Sabha looked stunned at Birla giving a long speech as he moved a resolution to condemn the imposition of the Emergency on its 50th anniversary.
The Modi-led ruling dispensation is trying hard to sell the notion of business as usual. But the reality of the day is different. The BJP and its allies may at best have a six-month ‘honeymoon period’, and afterwards, the pulls and pressures of coalition politics will begin to kick in. That should diminish the scope of the treasury bench's one-upmanship in the Lok Sabha.
Birla should see the writing on the wall. He must certainly not allow a repeat of the dark episode when former BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri hysterically abused fellow member Danish Ali with religious slurs and went unpunished.
By not meting out an exemplary punishment to Bidhuri, Birla carries a debt on his head and he must repay it in the 18th Lok Sabha by protecting the rights of each MP equally.
Brandishing copies of the Constitution while taking oaths, the Opposition MPs have already signalled that there is a new air in the House. Birla can take a deep breath and show his creative skills to gain the support of all the MPs in order to ensure productive sessions of the Lok Sabha.
(The author is a senior Delhi-based journalist. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)