New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker’s post is being contested by two candidates, the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) Om Birla, who was the Speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha, and eight-term MP from the Congress, K. Suresh.
This is, however, not the first instance that the Speaker’s post has seen a poll, with at least three previous occasions witnessing voting on the floor of the House, while in two other instances, the Opposition parties put up a candidate but the Speaker’s election was held on the basis of a voice vote.
According to Ravindra Garimella, former Joint Secretary (Legislation), the first time an election for the Speaker’s post took place was in the first Lok Sabha of 1952, when G.V. Mavalankar polled 394 votes to defeat Shantaram More, who managed to garner 55 votes.
Then again, in 1967, during the fourth Lok Sabha, Congress’ Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy faced off against Tenneti Viswanathan, whose candidature was supported by former Prime Minister, the late Atal Behari Vajpayee, who was then an MP. Reddy was elected as the Speaker, having polled 278 votes against Viswanathan’s 207.
And finally, in the fifth Lok Sabha, the duration of the fifth session was extended by an year following the imposition of Emergency by the late then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. The then Speaker G.S. Dhillon had resigned on December 1, 1975. “In 1976, the election of Baliram Bhagat was necessitated by the fact that the previous Speaker had been made a Cabinet Minister in the then Congress government,” Mr. Garimella said.

  BJP, Congress, Election

Agencies