Two previous Speaker elections: in first Lok Sabha, post-Emergency

Parliament is headed for arare election to the Speaker’s post after talks between the government and the Opposition on the issue failed. While the Narendra Modi government has renominated Kota MP Om Birla, the Speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha, the Opposition has decided to field K Suresh, the eight-time MP from Mavelikkara in Kerala.

A look at two previous instances where an election was held to elect the Speaker:

In the Parliament convened after thefirst general election in the country, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru moved the motion for Malvankar, a prominent freedom fighter belonging to Gujarat and a former member of the Constituent Assembly, to be chosen as the Speaker. It was seconded by then Parliamentary Affairs Minister Satya Narayan Sinha, Darbhanga Central MP S N Das and Gurgaon MP Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava.

However, Cannanore MP A K Gopalan, a founder of the Communist movement in India and one of the 16 CPI MPs in the House, moved a motion in More’s favour. The candidature of More, one of the founders of the Peasants and Workers Party of India (PWPI), a Marxist political party, was seconded by Berhampore MP T K Chaudhuri (the founder leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party), Mavelikkara MP N S Nair (who was a trade unionist) and Basirhat MP Renu Chakravarty (CPI).

Incidentally, the Opposition’s nominee for Speaker, K Suresh, is also an MP from Mavelikara. In another coincidence, the Speaker election at the time was also entwined with the issue of whether the government would share the position of Deputy Speaker with the Opposition.

Lanka Sundaram (an Independent) intervened to say that the leader of the House and the Deputy Speaker must be appointed through consensus and sought an adjournment to hold