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Informist, Tuesday, Jun. 10, 2025

NEW DELHI – Congress President and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate the process of electing a deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha. The post has been lying vacant for the second consecutive term of the Lok Sabha, he said, adding that there was no deputy speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha too.

In a letter to Prime Minister Modi dated Monday, Kharge also advocated for appointing a deputy speaker from the Opposition bloc, which is a "well-established" convention. "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," Kharge 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's request for appointing a deputy speaker came ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, starting from Jul. 21 and set to conclude on Aug. 12. He underlined that keeping deputy speaker's post vacant is in violation of well laid out provisions of the Constitution.

Article 93 of the Constitution mandates the election of both the speaker and the deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha. Deputy speaker is the second-highest presiding officer of the House after the speaker. "The House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker thereof and, so often as the office of Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant, the House shall choose another member to be Speaker or Deputy Speaker, as the case may be," the Article 93 reads.

Kharge also pointed that traditionally, the deputy speaker has been elected in the second or third session of a newly constituted Lok Sabha.

"In view of the foregoing and in keeping with the esteemed traditions of the House and the democratic ethos of our Parliament, I request your good self to initiate the process of electing a Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha without any further delay," Kharge wrote.  End

Reported by Kuldeep Singh

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

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