As the first session of parliament after the Lok Sabha polls commences next week, the question in the minds of all Indians is whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi can foist another ‘spineless’ speaker to the detriment of democracy.
For the Opposition, which is raring to have a go at the government after the INDIA bloc’s good showing, the outgoing speaker Om Birla, who helped take parliament to its nadir with his actions and inactions, was a nightmare.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The entrepreneur-turned-politician from Kota in Rajasthan will go down in history as the weakest presiding officer the country had witnessed as he used every occasion to pull down the already demoralised Opposition and thereby parliamentary democracy too.
When the healing touch was needed to balance the system in the face of a brute majority, 61-year-old Birla presided over the largest suspensions from the house, some 140 odd Opposition members, thereby creating a dubious record of protecting a troubled government through questionable means.
It was not accidental that the house did not take up any major issue that agitated the Opposition for debate in parliament. There was no debate on the Chinese incursions or the prime minister’s controversial remarks on them, the Adani affair and even the burning Manipur issue about which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief is now speaking.
When the Opposition persisted, it suffered in various ways and sometimes the spacious plea was ‘disrespecting the Chair’. A Madhu Limaye — a freedom fighter and a parliamentarian who was known for his deep understanding and thorough knowledge of Rules of Procedure and effective use of parliamentary devices — would have died a 100 death.
The way Rahul Gandhi was summarily disqualified from the house over a petty matter showed how Birla became a willing tool of the Modi dispensation to take vengeance on the Opposition. The Mahua Moitra matter also does not show Birla glowingly.
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Birla might take solace in reports that he has become the first presiding officer to have been re-elected as an MP in 20 years but it looks like the end of the road for now with the prime minister ignoring him in Cabinet formation.
Birla could have angled for a second term as the presiding officer had Modi gained a majority on his own for the third time.
The N. Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar crutches have lent a bit of dependency on the “supreme leader” who started his reign by bowing before the parliament when he became the prime minster but did everything to damage the hallowed institution of democracy.
The only speaker who had got two terms as a presiding officer of the Lok Sabha was the late Balram Jakhar when the Congress was at the helm. Jakhar too can’t be considered as a great speaker.
Birla’s predecessor was Sumitra Mahajan, who is better known as Tai (sister), who belonged to the A.B. Vajpayee era. The eighth-term Lok Sabha member was humiliated during the 2019 parliamentary polls as the BJP delayed her nomination despite her being the speaker. Flabbergasted Tai took the cue and announced her retirement. The signal was that she was not enough pliable.
The problem for Birla was that the prime minister always looked from behind his shoulders. Birla took it as his power and did the bidding. No one remembers the name of any of the Gujarat assembly speakers when Modi was there at the helm. Opposition there was a pitiable lot.
One more minus for Birla was that he did not pitch for or did not seem to pitch for having a deputy speaker, a post that would have gone to the Opposition if the convention would have been followed. The 17th Lok Sabha worked without a deputy speaker and the tragedy is that it was as per a design. Perhaps, no one in the ruling dispensation was seen to have made a pitch for the election of a deputy speaker was also a tragedy. So much for all those who project themselves as the champions of democracy and trumpeted during the G-20 summit how India is a mother of democracy.
The journalist fraternity too saw Birla as the most unfriendly presiding officer ever. Under his stewardship, the Central Hall of Parliament, which was seen as a great place for the exchange of ideas between the legislators and the media, was made dysfunctional. Several prime ministers including Jawaharlal Nehru and Vajpayee have come to the Central Hall. Vajpayee even came there when he was in the Opposition so also L.K. Advani. Modi has not been spotted there.
Modi might have opened the new parliament house building with much fanfare last year but he saw to it that there is no Central Hall in the premises. Taking the hint from the leader, Birla has made a large number of senior journalists, veterans in their field, who were made holders of the Central Hall passes of the Long and Distinguished category (L & D category) non-entities by revoking the permanent passes altogether. It was a sort of Margdarshak Mandal for the media.
A phone call to those concerned in parliament evinces a cryptic reaction: No decision has been taken so far on your re-entry.
For those in the media actively covering parliament, Birla has introduced some measures that trickle down the entry of journalists in parliament by taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. In history, he will go down as the person who sold the parliament in the world’s largest democracy for a song.
The next few days would witness much churning within the Opposition and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on who will be the next speaker. The election of the speaker will be an important one because it will be the first trial of strength in the new house.
How the new government, which is now the NDA government and not the Modi dispensation, and the revitalised Opposition will be squaring off on the key matter, is something which is being looked at eagerly. Some reports have suggested that Andhra Pradesh BJP president and Rajahmundry MP Daggubati Purandeswari is one of the frontrunners for the post. The BJP leader is the daughter of the TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao and the sister-in-law of Naidu. She had been a minister in the Manmohan Singh government.
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Meanwhile, Modi’s choice of Kiren Rijiju as parliamentary affairs minister does not generate confidence given the fact that as a law and justice minister he had raised many a row by his controversial statements against the judiciary. It looked like they were made on design. When Modi wanted to cool the matters, he shifted Rijiju to a less significant ministry. Rijiju’s new responsibility shows that he still enjoys a close rapport with the prime minister.
Modi on his part goes down in history as the only democratic leader in independent India to have canvassed publicly against the Opposition through the audacious Congress-mukt Bharat campaign.
At least one thing is clear this time. The Opposition is not that hapless in the new Lok Sabha. The prime minister so far has not shown that he is a changed man. Unless that happens, confrontation is inevitable. The Opposition has a lot of questions on its mind and it is raring for a fight. Birla or no Birla.
Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are New Delhi-based journalists.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.