By Inder Jit
(Released on 26 March 1991)
The Lok Sabha’s mid-term poll offers the nation a fresh opportunity to set-up a badly-needed convention and, thereby, help stem the rot of Parliament’s continuing decline. True, the Lok Sabha asserted its constitutional supremacy on March 6 when Mr. Chandra Shekhar resigned in the face of the threat that the motion of thanks on the President’s address might be defeated because of the Congress-I boycott of the House. But the Ninth Lok Sabha’s own functioning touched a new low during the session — and earlier. Nothing sums this up better than the lament in the House a little earlier by the CPI leader, Mr. Indrajit Gupta, who said: “We do not find time in this House nowadays to have serious debates on the burning problems of the people. It is a pity that we are now concerned only with how to make Governments and unmake Governments and all kinds of horse-trading by which somebody can gang up with somebody else. I doubt if in the history of our country we have ever faced such an aggravated crisis of politics, of economics and of society itself…”
Much must be done if the Lok Sabha is to regain its lost vigour and vitality – and, what is more, respect. First and foremost, we need to take a good fresh look at the working of the House without further delay, as pleaded by me over the years in this column and on the floor of the Lok Sabha. (The House of Commons set up a Select Committee on Procedure some 14 years ago to review its functioning). Such a review will necessarily have to wait until the new Lok Sabha is constituted. However, there is one thing that the country’s top leaders could do straightway if they are serious about restoring health to our Parliament. They should agree to place the Speaker above electoral politics and thereby enable him to function impartially and independently. Conventions designed to achieve this end exist in the Mother of Parliaments, as also elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Our top leaders have been aware of these conventions all along. Regrettably, however, they have merely paid lip service to healthy parliamentary traditions.
Few in India, appreciate even today the key role of the Speaker in our parliamentary democracy without whom, according to Erskine May, “the House has no constitutional existence.” Jawaharlal Nehru understood fully the importance of the office of the Speaker and repeatedly laid emphasis on its prestige and authority. Speaking on March 8, 1958 on the occasion of the unveiling of the portrait of Speaker Vithalbhai Patel in the Lok Sabha, Nehru candidly observed: “The Speaker represents the House. He represents the dignity of the House, the freedom and liberty. Therefore, it is right that his should be an honoured position, a free position and should be occupied always by men of outstanding ability and impartiality.” Nehru also showed the greatest respect to the Speaker and by his own conduct as the Leader of the House encouraged the Chair to be independent and impartial.
I recall seeing Nehru once clash with free India’s first Speaker G.V. Mavalankar, on the floor of the Lok Sabha in the early fifties when the latter firmly disallowed him from making a second statement in one day in contravention of the rules. But Nehru soon realized his mistake and, though visibly agitated, gracefully bowed to the Speaker’s ruling. Curiously, however, nothing concrete came to be done to establish tried conventions designed to recognize and ensure the Speaker’s impartiality and independence. One sure way of achieving this was to depoliticize the office of the Speaker well and truly and to see that he was enabled to keep himself entirely aloof from party politics. Another more important way was to provide for his uncontested return to the House. But even Nehru failed to do the needful despite the clear lead given initially by Vithalbhai Patel in the pre-independence days and the healthy convention sought to be established by Mavalankar following independence.
Vithalbhai, who succeeded Sir Fredrick Whyte as India’s first Indian Speaker in 1925, dissociated himself from the Swarajist Party of which he was an active member prior to his election and kept himself aloof from party interests during his entire term of office. What is more, in the election of 1926, he did not stand on Congress ticket but contested as an independent and was returned unopposed. In 1951, before the Constitution came into effect, the Conference of Presiding Officers, under Mavalankar’s leadership, expressed the view that the Speaker should dissociate himself from party politics and, towards this end, “a convention should be established that the seat from which the Speaker stands for re-election should not be contested”. But this suggestion went unheeded and Mavalankar was forced to contest on Congress ticket — opposed by the Ram Rajya Parishad, the Scheduled Castes Federation and the Krishak Lok Party.
Few in India, appreciate even today the key role of the Speaker in our parliamentary democracy without whom, according to Erskine May, “the House has no constitutional existence.” Jawaharlal Nehru understood fully the importance of the office of the Speaker and repeatedly laid emphasis on its prestige and authority
Two years later, in 1953, the Conference of Presiding Officers at Gwalior adopted a resolution reaffirming its stand that a Speaker should be returned uncontested and expressing the view that “steps for making a beginning in that direction may be pressed upon the Government.” Mavalankar then took up the matter with Nehru. The Congress Working Committee considered the issue and sent a communication to Mavalankar which was disclosed by him at the Conference of Presiding Officers in Srinagar in 1954 in the following words: “Obviously, they (the Congress Working Committee) accept the desirability of laying the wider convention that the Speaker’s seat should not be contested but that they will require concurrence of other political parties which they felt was not possible to obtain. But the important point is that they have accepted that it is a right convention and further they have also accepted the position that so far as possible they should not set aside a Speaker while considering his nomination for general election and then his election to Speakership..”
In fact, many unfortunate, nay tragic, developments have taken place at the Centre and in the States during the past three decades and more deeply involving the Speakers in active politics. In 1975, Mrs Gandhi brought the Lok Sabha down to the level of some state Assemblies and appointed Speaker G.S. Dhillon a minister in her Cabinet, undermining both the prestige and the independence of the chair. No eyebrows are raised any more in the States when politicians accept Speakership only to exploit the office for richer political dividends.
The Congress Working Committee’s decision was welcomed by Mavalankar as a good advance in the desired direction. “All conventions”, he added, “grow bit by bit…. we have laid the first brick very firmly and we have now to strive further.”. Mavalankar then significantly proceeded to spell out “the necessary counterpart of this convention” — the obligation on the Speaker. “The counterpart”, he said, “is controversial politics. The essence of the matter is that the Speaker has to place himself in the position of a judge. He has not to become a partisan so as to avoid unconscious bias for or against a particular view and thus inspire confidence in all sections of the House about his integrity and impartiality. If we are able to build up this convention on our own, then only we shall be able to justify, in course of time, the other one about the Speaker’s seat being uncontested.”
Alas, things have not worked out the way Mavalankar hoped. The Speaker, after all, is human and it has not always been possible (or practicable) for him to resist political temptation in the absence of a definite convention assuring his continuance in office through uncontested parliamentary election. At least one erstwhile Speaker candidly told me following his acceptance of the office: “We are elected on party ticket with party funds. How can we claim independence?” In fact, many unfortunate, nay tragic, developments have taken place at the Centre and in the States during the past three decades and more deeply involving the Speakers in active politics. In 1975, Mrs Gandhi brought the Lok Sabha down to the level of of some state Assemblies and appointed Speaker G.S. Dhillon a minister in her Cabinet, undermining both the prestige and the independence of the chair. No eyebrows are raised any more in the States when politicians accept Speakership only to exploit the office for richer political dividends.
India’s First Speaker GV Mavalankar said, “The essence of the matter is that the Speaker has to place himself in the position of a judge. He has not to become a partisan so as to avoid unconscious bias for or against a particular view and thus inspire confidence in all sections of the House about his integrity and impartiality. If we are able to build up this convention on our own, then only we shall be able to justify, in course of time, the other one about the Speaker’s seat being uncontested.”
The Opposition has unfortunately not always acted in its best self-interest by denying, in effect, cooperation in providing for that uncontested election of a Speaker and adopting the traditional British maxim: Once a Speaker, always a Speaker. It has failed to appreciate that its need of an independent and impartial Speaker is much greater than that of the Government which, in any case, is able to take care of itself with its majority. Indeed, the Speaker has been given absolute powers under our rules mainly to enable him to function impartially and give the required protection to the minority in the best national interest. The Opposition has not only acted unwisely in this matter. Worse, it has undermined the Speaker’s dignity and ability to function judiciously by disobeying him time and again and even calling him names. Ultimately, the Speaker’s office can and should be depoliticized by common consent and the Speaker enabled to rise above political temptation and maintain his independence and impartiality. — INFA