The 17th Lok Sabha was constituted at the beginning of June 2019 and became the first to end its tenure without a deputy speaker. The Speaker of the House was elected by June 19. However, the office of the Deputy Speaker of the House of the People remained vacant until the last session of the 17th Lok Sabha.
In February 2023, the Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by an advocate, Shariq Ahmed, that raised the issue of a deputy speaker not being elected in the Lok Sabha and several state assemblies.
Besides the Lok Sabha, the state assemblies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jharkhand did not have deputy speakers as of February 2024.
In March 2023, the Congress raised the issue of the Lok Sabha having no deputy speaker for about four years, claiming this to be ‘unconstitutional’.
As per the Lok Sabha rules, the speaker decides the date of the election of the deputy speaker. However, as pointed out by P.D.T Achary, former secretary-general of the Lok Sabha, in reality, “it is the government which consults with all parties and decides a consensus candidate for the role of the deputy speaker.”
Constitutional Provisions on the Election of Deputy Speaker
Article 93 of the Constitution of India deals with the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of the People, and 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 Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant, the House shall choose another member to be Speaker or Deputy Speaker, as the case may be.”
In the context of state assemblies, Article 178 says: “Every Legislative Assembly of a State shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the Assembly to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speakers thereof and, so often as the office of Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant, the Assembly shall choose another member to be Speaker or Deputy Speaker, as the case may be.”
Importance of the Post
According to the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Lok Sabha, the deputy speaker enjoys the same powers as the speaker when presiding over a session of the House. Article 180 of the Constitution stipulates that the deputy speaker has the power to conduct the duties of the speaker when the speaker’s chair is vacant. The deputy speaker assumes the legislative as well as the administrative functions and powers of the speaker when the latter is absent.
The continuity of the speaker’s office is ensured by the deputy speaker when he/she acts as the speaker when the latter is absent due to illness, resignation, or death, for instance.
The deputy speaker is not subordinate to the speaker, but holds an independent constitutional post; is answerable to the House, and can only be removed by the House. Moreover, as per the Constitution, the speaker, on choosing to resign, has to submit his/her resignation to the deputy speaker.
Views on Mandatory Filling of the Vacancy
According to those who say the vacancy must be filled, the expression used in Articles 93 and 178 is ‘shall’ and not ‘may’, so no discretion in the matter is left with the House. In other words, the House must elect a deputy speaker. The Constitution makers considered the posts of speaker and deputy speaker so important that they provided that if either of the posts became vacant, they must be filled as quickly as possible. The expression, ‘as soon as may be’, is not to be interpreted as an indefinite postponement in filling the constitutional post of deputy speaker.
According to Article 122(1) of the Constitution, “The validity of any proceedings in Parliament shall not be called in question on the ground of any alleged irregularity of procedure.” It is pointed out by some, in this context, that the courts do have jurisdiction to at least inquire into why there has been no election to the post of deputy speaker because the Constitution does mention an election to be held “as soon as may be”.
The spokespersons of the government, however, point out that the words “as soon as may be” indicate that there is no constitutional obligation to elect a deputy speaker within a specific time limit. Moreover, the conduct of the Lok Sabha proceedings is not adversely affected in the absence of the deputy speaker. There is a provision to overcome the absence of the speaker: a panel of nine members of the House drawn from among senior and experienced members of different party affiliations, and act as chairpersons when the speaker is absent and assists in running the House. The constitutional office of the deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha, in one view, is more of a symbol of parliamentary democracy than an office of some real authority.
Delays in Past Appointments
There have been a few instances of deputy speakers being elected after a considerable amount of time following the election of the speaker. In the 10th Lok Sabha, there was a lapse of 33 days between the election of the speaker and the election of S. Mallikarjunaiah as deputy speaker. In the 11th Lok Sabha, Suraj Bhan was elected as deputy speaker within 52 days. In the 12th Lok Sabha, P.M. Sayeed became the deputy speaker on the 270th day after the speaker got elected. In the next Lok Sabha, Sayeed again became the deputy speaker in just 7 days, as did Charanjit Singh Atwal and Karia Munda in the 14th and 15th Lok Sabha, respectively. M. Thambi Durai was elected deputy speaker 70 days after the speaker’s election in the 16th Lok Sabha. The 17th Lok Sabha has broken the previous record in keeping the post vacant for the longest period.
About the Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker’s Office
The Government of India Act, 1919 provided for the institutions of speaker and deputy speaker, though they were called president and deputy president, respectively (a nomenclature that was to continue till 1947). It was in 1921 that the Governor General of India appointed Frederick Whyte and Sachidanand Sinha the president and deputy president (speaker and the deputy speaker), respectively, of the Central Legislative Assembly.
In September 1948, the legislative wing of the Constituent Assembly elected G.V. Mavalankar as the first speaker and M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar as the first deputy speaker. After the promulgation of the Constitution of India and the first Lok Sabha elections in 1951-52, Mavalankar and Ananthasayanam Ayyangar were elected the first Speaker and the first Deputy Speaker, respectively, of the first Lok Sabha constituted in April 1952.
Election and term of office The deputy speaker, like the speaker, is elected by a simple majority by the Lok Sabha itself from amongst its members after the speaker has been elected. Under Rule 8 of the Lok Sabha rules, the speaker has to decide when the election of the deputy speaker takes place. After the date of election is fixed, any member of the House can propose the name of any other member as a candidate for the election.
Once elected, the deputy speaker remains in the office usually during the term of the Lok Sabha, though he may vacate his office earlier if (i) he ceases to be a member of the Lok Sabha; (ii) he resigns by writing to the speaker; and (iii) a resolution for his removal, moved after 14 days’ notice, is passed by a majority of all the then members of the Lok Sabha.
Role and power of deputy speaker The deputy speaker performs the duties of the speaker’s office when it is vacant and when the speaker is absent from a sitting (including a joint sitting) of the House. In either case, he/she assumes all the powers of the speaker. Not subordinate to the speaker, the deputy speaker is responsible to the House. His rulings are final and binding, and cannot be appealed against even though he assumes the powers of the speaker when the latter is absent. Whenever appointed as a member of a parliamentary committee, the deputy speaker automatically becomes its chairman.
When the speaker presides over the House, the deputy speaker is just an ordinary member of the House, participating in its proceedings, speaking in debates, and voting on any question before the House.
Trend of appointing deputy speaker from the opposition Though neither the Constitution nor the Lok Sabha rules prescribe it, a trend (or unwritten convention) has developed of electing a member of the opposition party to the position of the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha. It has been pointed out that Sardar Hukam Singh from the Akali Dal was elected unanimously as deputy speaker in 1956 even though he did not belong to the ruling Congress party. However, in the following several terms of the Lok Sabha, the ruling Congress party held both the speaker’s and deputy speaker’s posts. (In 1957, though Sardar Hukam Singh was once again elected as Deputy Speaker of the second Lok Sabha, by then he was a member of the Congress party.)
Much later, the first non-Congress government of Morarji Desai offered the position of the Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha to the Congress party, the main opposition party in 1977.
The Indira Gandhi government in 1980 and the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1984 did not offer the position to an opposition party, but gave it to their allies, the DMK and the AIADMK, respectively.
From 1989 onwards, successive governments have followed the convention of allowing an opposition party member to be elected as deputy speaker.
The vacant seat of a deputy speaker is seen as an unwillingness of government to allow a strong opposition party get a hold in the legislative business in the Lok Sabha. The government was also not been able to find a non-ally party to put up a candidate. Hence, the office of the deputy speaker remained vacant throughout the 17th Lok Sabha.
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