INDIA MPs not to assist pro tem Speaker

Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc leaders, who are part of a panel to assist pro tem speaker Bhartruhari Mahtab in administering oath to newly elected Lok Sabha members, will not be performing their duties, a senior Opposition leader said on June 22. This could signal an escalation of tensions between the government and the INDIA bloc.

Congress’ Kodikunnil Suresh, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) T.R. Baalu, and Sudip Bandopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) were part of the panel, but they will skip their duties to protest against the Centre’s decision to ignore Mr. Suresh despite his being the senior-most MP, sources said.

Two other senior MPs — BJP leaders Radha Mohan Singh and Faggan Singh Kulaste — are also on the panel to assist the pro tem Speaker.

“By all convention and tradition, Kodikunnil Suresh should have been the pro tem Speaker,“ Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told The Hindu in an interview.

While Mr. Mahtab has been elected for seven consecutive terms, the Congress MP from Kerala is an eight-term member. However, Mr. Suresh was not a member of the Lok Sabha in 1998 and 2004, and therefore, did not have an uninterrupted tenure in the Lok Sabha.

“We wanted the proceedings of Parliament, meeting for the first time with a new set of MPs, to start on a good note. But even before the start of the first session of the Parliament, Congress resorted to misleading everyone through social media posts,” Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju had said on Friday.

But the Congress said the Centre’s decision was part of the Narendra Modi government’s “bulldozer tactics” in running the Parliament. “The Opposition is not going to take it lying down....It cannot be the standard Modi-Shah (Prime Minister Narendra Modi-Home Minister Amit Shah) way of dealing with Parliament and bulldozer tactics,” Mr. Ramesh said.