Have Presiding Officers in Parliament Become Partisan Players?

When King Charles I demanded that the Speaker of the House of Commons produce five members for arrest during the Civil War of the 1640s, Speaker Lenthall famously proclaimed, “May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what Your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”

The Speakers of the House of Commons were so independent, that between 1394 and 1535, seven speakers were beheaded by the King of England, presumably for upsetting the king. This set the tone for the role of the modern institutions of Speakers in Westminster Parliaments across the Commonwealth.

In India, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha were supposed to be non-partisan umpires who were supposed to be the protectors of the rights of the members of Parliament.

This piece is an attempt to analyse how both the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha are no longer umpires but have become political and legal players in their own right, acting in a partisan manner.

Much has been written on the role of the Speaker in certifying money Bills, maintaining decorum and disqualifying members. But I wish to draw attention to the often ignored role of the Speaker and Chairman in stifling opposition both inside and outside the Parliament.

An ignored aspect of the role of the Speaker and the Chairman is that they are the final arbiters of the record of the proceedings: after a month or two, a verbatim record is supposed to be produced by the parliamentary reports.

However, the Speaker and Chairman are in charge of expunging the records, if he determines it to be unparliamentary. In an attempt to be historical revisionists, the Speaker and Chairman have often directed that matters which are inconvenient to the powers that be not be recorded.

For example on Monday, July 1, the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha directed that the Prime Minister’s comments on “mujra” by the Opposition not be recorded. This is a disservice to not only the posts that be but also history.

It is a travesty in the Parliament when Opposition’s speeches are expunged but when Ramesh Bhiduri used the choicest of communal slurs against Danish Ali in the same Parliament, there was no action against him.

It is not only that records of proceedings are expunged, but that the microphones of Opposition leaders are also turned off or are interrupted constantly while the diatribes of the treasury Benches are allowed unabated.

I do not begrudge the treasury their freedom of speech but only argue that the Opposition be given the same right.

Along the same lines, under the garb of Covid restrictions, reporters from newspapers and digital media are still not allowed in the Parliament by an Order of the Speaker. It is an unbridled, arbitrary power against which no review or appeal is available. As a result, we are left with no opinion but to bemoan this.

The Speaker is also the supreme custodian of the precincts of the House. During the tenure of Om Birla, we have seen two major acts which are anti-constitutional.

First, was the insertion of Sengol, a kingly power inside the Lok Sabha chamber. We are not a monarchy, and there ought not to be such a symbol inside the precincts of a chamber that elects its members.

The second was the removal of the statues of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, M.K. Gandhi and Shivaji from their place of prominence to other places.

Using his power as the custodian of the Parliamentary estate to draw attention away from these statutes which served as a sight for protest for Opposition against the oft-arbitrary exercise of powers, such as members of Parliament camping out there or raising slogans.

This, while not being an illegal exercise of power, is definitely an improper exercise aimed at stifling opposition outside of the Houses.

Speaker Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, while speaking at the Emergent Conference of Presiding Officers on April 6, 1968, noted that the Speaker (and by extension the Chairman) can claim no inherent right to override or bypass the House, or to arrogate to himself powers and functions which belong to the House.

Today, we seem to have forgotten these wise words. Speaker Om Birla’s first act on being elected as Speaker was reading a diatribe against the Indian National Congress (INC) party and the Emergency.

I do not hold a brief for the INC, nor is the Emergency defendable: but one thing is clear, Speaker Birla and Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar are going to continue being partisan, but one hopes that they wake up to the constitutional importance of their posts, and stop with their partisan politics, and remind themselves that they are not politically partisan players but umpires.

Rohin Bhatt is a queer lawyer practising at the Supreme Court of India and a bioethicist. The views are personal.

Courtesy: The Leaflet