World | India
Presiding officers make history
The country is set to have a Scheduled Caste speaker and a Scheduled Tribe deputy speaker in parliament's lower house for the first time since it became a republic 59 years ago.
- By Ajay Jha, Chief Correspondent
- Published: 23:01 June 2, 2009
- Congress leader Meira Kumar (centre) is accompanied by leader of the Congress party in the house, Pranab Mukherjee (right), and senior leader Sharad Pawar (left) as she files her nomination for the Lok Sabha speaker's post in New Delhi on Tuesday.
- Image Credit: EPA
New Delhi: The country is set to have a Scheduled Caste speaker and a Scheduled Tribe deputy speaker in parliament's lower house for the first time since it became a republic 59 years ago.
Meira Kumar of the ruling Congress party and Karia Munda of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the principal opposition group in parliament, have emerged as consensus candidates to become speaker and deputy speaker of the newly elected Lok Sabha.
While Kumar's candidature had been announced by the Congress party on behalf of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) earlier on Sunday, the BJP parliamentary board named veteran tribal leader Munda, 72, as its nominee for the deputy speaker's post.
"The BJP's central parliamentary board held a meeting today after the government's proposal that, as per convention, the deputy speaker's post be given to the main opposition party. The parliamentary board decided to name six-time member of parliament in the Lok Sabha, Karia Munda, as the candidate for the post," BJP general-secretary Arun Jaitley announced.
Later in the day, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, submitted 13 sets of nomination papers signed by constituents of the UPA as well as the BJP.
So far no other nomination has been filed and the unanimous election of Kumar as the new speaker today is a foregone conclusion.
The BJP is of the view that the Congress party has tried to steal its thunder by nominating Kumar as the first woman speaker after coming to know about its plans of fielding Sumitra Mahajan for the deputy speaker's post, which would have made her the first woman to occupy the post.
The BJP parliamentary board had to give up the temptation of proposing a woman for the deputy speaker's post as well and settled to counter the Congress ploy of naming a Scheduled Caste (lower caste Hindu) as speaker by having a Scheduled Tribe nominee as the deputy speaker.
Incidentally, while the Lok Sabha has had Scheduled Caste speakers in the past, never before has a Scheduled Tribe candidate occupied the post of the deputy speaker, although Kumar will become the first woman speaker.
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