President Murmu breaching convention in appointing a pro tem Speaker worrisome

President Droupadi Murmu has breached several conventions in quick succession, the latest being the appointment of a pro tem Speaker who is not the senior-most member of the Lok Sabha, writes S.N. Sahu.

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The Narendra Modi government breached the convention of not appointing a Lok Sabha member of Parliament (MP) from the opposition benches to the post of deputy Speaker during the tenure of the 17th Lok Sabha from 2019 to 2024.

Now, it has tragically violated a well-established parliamentary practice of appointing the senior-most member of Lok Sabha as pro tem Speaker when President Droupadi Murmu appointed Bhartruhari Mahtab, an MP for six terms, to that position.

In doing so, she wilfully ignored the senior-most member of the House, K. Suresh, who has been a member of Lok Sabha for eight terms, representing the Indian National Congress (INC).

Mahtab was a member of the House for six terms as a candidate of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). He has been elected to the 18th Lok Sabha as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate.

Constitutional provision

Article 95(1) of the Constitution states that when the post of the Speaker and the deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha remain vacant, the President of India shall appoint a member of the House to discharge the functions of Speaker.

Normally, the posts of Speaker and deputy Speaker fall vacant when a newly elected Lok Sabha is constituted and its members have not taken an oath to perform their roles as legislators.

Only at that point in time is a member of Lok Sabha appointed by the President of India as Speaker, and is called the pro tem Speaker. Such a person exercises all the powers and privileges of the Speaker of Lok Sabha.

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In Surendra Vassant Sirsat of Mapusa, Goa versus Legislative Assembly of State of Goa, the Bombay High Court, on June 14, 1995, observed that the use of the expression 'pro tem Speaker' has received parliamentary imprimatur for several decades and the occupant of that office could perform all the duties entrusted to the Speaker by the Constitution and rules of procedure of the legislature for conducting all its proceedings.

Duties of a pro tem Speaker

Normally, the role of a pro tem Speaker has been confined to administering the oath to newly elected members of Lok Sabha and conducting the election of the Speaker.

Criticism against Mahtab's appointment

However, because the President of India decided to pick up Mahtab and administered him the oath to function as a pro tem Speaker, ignoring K. Suresh, INC leader Jairam Ramesh made critical remarks against the decision.

In response, parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju gave a shallow reasoning that Mahtab was preferred because he has been elected uninterruptedly for six terms, in contrast, Suresh has not been elected to Lok Sabha in successive elections continuously for eight terms.

Well-established parliamentary practice

The rationale provided by Rijiju runs counter to the authentic account given by two former secretary generals of Lok Sabha, M.N. Kaul and S.L. Shakdher, who in their monumental book Practice and Procedure of Parliament, have stated in the chapter "President in Relation to Parliament" that "it has been an established practice that the senior-most member in the newly constituted House is appointed as Speaker pro tem and he remains in office till the election of a new Speaker by the House".

2018 appointment of pro tem Speaker in Karnataka

On May 19, 2018, the Supreme Court Observer (SCO) prepared a text titled "7 legal questions on 'Pro-tem Speaker'". It was done in the backdrop of the 2018 writ petition of the INC challenging the decision of the then Karnataka governor Vajubhai Vala to appoint BJP member of legislative assembly (MLA) K.G. Bopiah as the pro tem Speaker, ignoring the senior-most MLA R.V. Deshpande.

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Bopiah invited B.S. Yediyurappa-led BJP to form the government as the leader of the single-largest party, overlooking the post-alliance formation of INC and Janata Dal (Secular).

He gave Yediyurappa 15 days to seek a vote of confidence. The INC had prayed that a vote of confidence should be sought by Yeddyurappa within twenty-four hours.

The SCO text also stated that "while there are no specific constitutional or statutory provisions (for appointment of a pro tem Speaker), by constitutional convention the senior-most member of the House has to be chosen as pro tem Speaker. Seniority in this context refers to the membership in the House and not the age of the member".

It is clear that the Modi government-appointed governor of Karnataka ignored the established parliamentary practice of appointing the senior-most member as pro-tem Speaker of the Karnataka legislative assembly.

Six years later, in 2024, President Droupadi Murmu is acting against that practice by appointing Mahtab as pro tem Speaker for, among other things, administering the oath of office to the newly elected members of the 18th Lok Sabha and conducting the election of the Speaker.

In the case of the aforementioned Karnataka issue concerning the BJP MLA K.G. Bopiah's appointment as the pro tem Speaker, the Supreme Court took a stand, while hearing the writ petition filed by the INC, that it could not adjudicate the issue without hearing Bopiah and in case it issued a notice to him, then the main prayer for seeking a vote of confidence within twenty-four hours might not be taken up expeditiously.

Since the INC was keen that the trust vote should take place expeditiously, it dropped the issue of Bopiah's appointment as pro tem Speaker who, in fact, presided over the proceedings of the House while Yediyurappa sought a trust vote he eventually did not win.

It is rather sad that the break from the convention that was introduced by the Karnataka governor in 2018 in appointing a BJP MLA as pro tem Speaker in contravention of the well-established practice of selecting the senior-most MLA, has been repeated by the President of India Droupadi Murmu in appointing Mahtab.

Past pro tem Speakers of Lok Sabha

In fact, the incumbency chart of the pro tem Speakers appointed by successive Presidents of our republic from the constitution of the first Lok Sabha in 1952 till the 17th Lok Sabha in 2019 reveals that all of them were the senior-most members of the respective Lok Sabhas.

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The list of pro tem Speakers is given below:

Das (1952), Seth Govind Das (1957, 1962, 1967 and 1971), D.N. Tiwari (1977), Jagjivan Ram (1980 and 1985), N.G. Ranga (1989), Indrajit Gupta (1991, 1996, 1998 and 1999), 2004 (first Somnath Chatterjee was appointed and when he was picked up as a candidate for the post of Speaker, Balasaheb Vikhe Patil was appointed as pro tem Speaker), Manikrao Hodlya Gavit (2009), Kamal Nath (2014) and BJP's Virender Kumar (2019).

It is worrisome that in 2024, after the 18th Lok Sabha was constituted, Mahtab, in spite of not being the senior-most member of the House, has been appointed as pro tem Speaker by President Murmu.

Violations of conventions

A few days earlier, the President invited Narendra Modi to form the government without ascertaining if he had been elected as leader of the BJP's parliamentary party.

She also did not ask him to seek a vote of confidence on the floor of Lok Sabha jolly well knowing that his party, the BJP, had only obtained 240 Lok Sabha seats, falling short of the majority mark of 272; and needed the support of its allies to cross that mark.

She should have followed her distinguished predecessors such as President R. Venkataraman and K.R. Narayanan who, while calling V.P. Singh in 1989 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 respectively to form governments, assured themselves that they were elected by their corresponding legislature parties and asked them to prove majority in Lok Sabha.

Saving the Constitution by following conventions

Such contraventions of conventions by President Murmu in quick succession, apart from creating bad precedents, would imperil our Constitution, the protection of which has been made an electoral issue by the people of India in many states during the recently held general elections.

She, as the President of India, is bound by the oath she has taken to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and should lead the people of our country to save the Constitution.

By acting in accordance with the conventions, she can set an example in this direction.