Initiate process of electing LS deputy speaker: Kharge to PM Modi

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to initiate the process of electing a deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Keeping the position vacant “does not augur well for India’s democratic polity and is also in violation of well laid out provisions of the Constitution,” the Congress chief said.

In his letter to the PM, Kharge noted that from the first to the sixteenth Lok Sabha, every House has had a deputy speaker.

By and large, it has been a well-established convention to appoint the deputy speaker from among the members of the principal opposition party, he said.

“However, for the first time in independent India’s history, this position has remained vacant for two consecutive Lok Sabha terms. No Deputy Speaker was elected during the seventeenth Lok Sabha, and this concerning precedent continues in the ongoing eighteenth Lok Sabha,” Kharge said.

“This does not augur well for India’s democratic polity and is also in violation of well laid out provisions of the Constitution,” the Congress chief said.

Kharge’s demand comes ahead of Parliament‘s Monsoon session starting from July 21.