Congress allegations on appointment of pro-tem Speaker ‘misleading’, says Rijiju

Minister Rijiju dismisses Congress claims of overlooking MP for pro-tem Speaker, citing past precedents and lack of validity.

Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju on June 21 termed the Congress party’s allegations that the claims of its MP, K. Suresh, had been overlooked in the appointment of pro-tem Speaker as “misleading”. He insisted that the Opposition had no “valid argument” on its side.

On June 20, President Droupadi Murmu assented to appointing BJP MP Bhartruhari Mahtab as pro-tem Speaker (usually the senior-most MP elected to administer the oath of office to other MPs in the House) of the 18th Lok Sabha. However, the Congress protested the move, and asserted that Mr. Suresh who had entered his eighth term was overlooked.

Mr. Rijiju claimed that Mr. Suresh, though an eight-term MP, was not a member of the Lok Sabha in 1998 and 2004 and hence did not have an uninterrupted tenure.

“Do you think such an argument is even valid,” he asked about the Congress’s accusation that Mr. Suresh was ignored as he was a Dalit. Mr. Mahtab, he said, was entering his seventh consecutive tenure.

“We wanted the proceedings of Parliament, meeting for the first time with a new set of MPs, to start on a good note. But, even before the start of the first session of the Parliament, the Congress resorted to misleading everyone through social media posts,” Mr. Rijiju said.

He then went on to cite past precedents to show that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in its time had ignored the seniority principle, specifically when Congress MP Balasaheb Vikhe Patil had been appointed the pro-tem Speaker, ignoring the claims of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the late George Fernandes and former Odisha Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang, who all had more terms under their belt.

He said that even in 2019, BJP MP Maneka Gandhi had eight terms, but there was a break when she wasn’t a member of the House, which is why current Minister for Social Justice Dr. Virendra Kumar was made pro-tem Speaker. He also cited a Supreme Court order of 2018 that maintained that the convention of senior-most lawmaker being appointed as pro-tem Speaker had no “legal force”.