Let the Speaker Speak

    

“Speakers must be politically impartial. Therefore, on election the new Speaker must resign from their political party and remain separate from political issues even in retirement… Speakers still stand in general elections. They are generally unopposed by the major political parties, who will not field a candidate in the Speaker's constituency - this includes the original party they were a member of. During a general election, Speakers do not campaign on any political issues but simply stand as 'the Speaker seeking re-election'.”

     No, this is not how our Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, or for that matter any of her predecessors, are/ were obliged to behave like. Had this been the case, the composite will of the people would have been expressed in the Parliament, bills would have been passed, or, amended and passed; session after session would not have been washed. Neither would have our Constitution’s words been mocked and spirit bled by certifying ordinary bills as Money bills, just for the sake of its smooth run and by justifying a blatantly perverse mean on the pretext of a supposedly noble end.

    The Speaker of the house of commons in a Parliamentary democracy is not a powerless nominal head. If there are, conventionally speaking, three pillars of democracy, the Speaker is the leader of one of those pillars i.e. Parliament, and has powers and authority matching no less than that of the Chief Justice of India and the Prime Minister- the heads of the remaining two pillars of democracy.

    In fact, the Speakers have so much command at their hand that it would not be an overstatement that they should literally be held accountable for mal- or non- functioning of Parliament, for issuance of ordinance after ordinance on the pretext of washed-out sessions, and for eroding the people’s faith in an institution that ironically is supposed to give them voices to check the tyranny of executives. Sadly, there are no institutional means to do so; neither are “we the people” politically literate and powerful enough to make the Speakers pay for their sins in the next election.

    Our Constitution makers should surely take the blame for unwarranted idealism and myopic vision, for a constitution, though, made 'by the people' and 'for the people', but, 'by the people' breathing in that hall and 'for the people' living outside at that time; no allowance was made 'for the people' who would fill that precinct later, in future; and no consideration was made 'for the People' who would still be, even after more than sixty years of independence, struggling to make their vote count.

     So, the office of Speaker was given complete authority and control over the functioning of the Parliament, only that the officeholders were still left to the mercy of their political bosses unless, of course, one is Somnath Chatterjee. It is the Speakers who preside over sessions, it is them who adjourn the session, it is them who decide who is to speak, when and for how long, it is them who can discipline the members by asking marshals to throw out the unruly and unbecoming ones, it is them who decide on disqualification of members on the ground of defection, and it is them who would have final word on whether the Aadhaar bill shall be treated as a money bill or otherwise, and consequently whether it will be passed or not.

    Many of the ills plaguing the Parliament can be abated, if not completely cured, by making the office of speaker as neutral as possible, and the beginning can be made by amending the constitution to give effect to the first graph in this article, which has been lifted from the United Kingdom Parliament’s official webpage, relating the functioning of speaker there.

(On 11.03.2016, The Lower House of Indian Parliament passed The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, as a Money Bill with a voice vote after a brief debate. The above opinion has been offered on this background by Mr. Gaurav Kumar, a Delhi- based Journalist.)