New Delhi, July 16
Suspense over the position of Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee continued today even as the Manmohan Singh government was gearing up for the crucial trust vote in the lower House on July 21-22.
The Speaker is upset that the CPM included his name in the list of its Lok Sabha members submitted to President Praibha Patil for withdrawing support to the UPA government.
A clarification on the issue came from CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury today. “A disinformation campaign on the issue of the inclusion of the Lok Sabha Speaker’s name in the CPM MPs list submitted to the President of India, is doing the rounds. What I had said is that the Speaker’s name should be included in the CPM list as he was elected as a CPM candidate but with an asterisk denoting that currently he is the Lok Sabha Speaker, as is the normal parliamentary practice,” he said in a statement.
Parliamentary sources pointed out that Chatterjee, a veteran Parliamentarian, was fully aware that the Speaker “holds a constitutional office” and the post falling vacant could create a crisis ahead of the trust vote.
They said under the normal convention the Speaker was the only person “who continues in office even after the dissolution of the House and till the constitution of the new House”.
In the present scenario, a piquant situation has arisen because the party (CPM) to which the Speaker belongs has withdrawn support to the government. “This kind of a situation was never envisaged by the framers of the Constitution.”
Admitting that there was pressure from the CPM on the Speaker to resign after the Left parties withdrew support to the government over the Indo-US nuclear deal, the sources said “any knee-jerk reaction” by Chatterjee
would have sent wrong signals across the country. His resignation would have given an impression that he had been presiding over the House as the leader of a particular party for four years.The sources said the Speaker was the head of Parliament secretariat and his position could not lie vacant. In this connection, they recalled that when the V.P. Singh government was voted out on the floor of the House in early nineties, Rabi Ray was the Speaker and he continued in the post even after the Chandra Shekhar government assumed office.
Asked if there was any possibility of the Speaker demitting office after the trust vote on July 22, the sources said it was entirely up to Chatterjee to take a decision in the matter.
Meanwhile, speculation is rife over the contents of the letter Chatterjee is said to have written to CPM boss Prakash Karat. It is being suggested in political circles that the Speaker has refused to vote along with the BJP against the government on the trust vote. He is also said to be angry with the CPM leadership for joining hands with the BSP to take on the Congress-led government in the Lok Sabha.. The Speaker’s issue may also figure at the CPM central committee meeting here on July 19-20.
