Om Birla likely to be Lok Sabha Speaker again, to file nomination

Om Birla

Amid uncertainty over who will be nominated as the Lok Sabha Speaker, BJP leader Om Birla met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.

The Opposition will be given the Deputy Speaker's post, according to News18.

Birla is likely to file his nomination for the Lok Sabha speaker’s position on Tuesday for the second successive term, according to reports.

If elected, he will be the second person to hold office for the second time.

"We have told Rajnath Singh that we will support their Speaker (candidate) but the convention is that the post of Deputy Speaker to be given to opposition...," says Congress MP Rahul Gandhi

Union Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and appealed to hold the Speaker election unanimously.  Singh said the tradition of being elected unopposed should be maintained. The name has not been disclosed yet. Kharge will talk to the rest of the INDIA Alliance parties once the name is revealed. There is a high possibility of the Speaker being elected unopposed, according to ANI.

If elected, Birla, will equal the record of Congress’s Balram Jhakhar who was elected as Speaker twice and was in the chair from 1980 to 1989.  In over three decades, Birla is the only Speaker who got re-elected to the Lok Sabha after serving five years in the office.

GMC Balayogi died midway as Speaker in 2002, Manohar Joshi and Meira Kumar lost their elections while Sumitra Mahajan and Somnath Chatterjee retired.

After the 2014 and 2019 elections, the BJP was unchallenged in nominating Sumitra Mahajan and Om Birla to the post. This time, it doesn't quite have the numbers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party is the single-largest in Parliament with 240 seats but is 32 short of majority. So, it must rely on Nitish Kumar's JDU and Chandrababu Naidu's TDP to remain in power.