Om Birla has made history by becoming the first Lok Sabha Speaker to get elected as a Member of Parliament in a general election since PA Sangma won the national polls in 1998. Clearly, the ruckus that voters see in the Lok Sabha and the action that the Speaker has to take against those committing unruly behaviour in the House does not often go well with voters.
But will Om Birla get his job back as the Lok Sabha Speaker? Reports suggest the ruling coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), is looking beyond Birla. The focus has shifted to Andhra Pradesh, where the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has emerged as the party with a mandate to govern the state and act as the second-largest constituent of the ruling NDA at the Centre.
The last time when TDP chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu was in such a position where his party played the role of propping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to stay in power at the Centre, he got the Speaker’s post for his party. GMC Balayogi was the first MP from Andhra Pradesh, and also the first Dalit person, to become the Lok Sabha Speaker. His son Harish Madhur is now a TDP MP.
Several names are doing rounds for the next possible MP to sit in the Speaker’s chair. Daggubati Purandeswari is one of them.
A polyglot, senior and friends everywhere
Purandeswari is a three-time Lok Sabha member, who has served as a Union minister in the Manmohan Singh government. She won her first Lok Sabha election from Bapatla in 2004 and secured a berth in 2009 as well from Vijayawada as a Congress nominee.
This time, Purandeswari won from Rajahmundry constituency on a BJP ticket, having lost the election in 2019. Purandeswari had joined the BJP in 2014, protesting the Manmohan Singh government’s decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh into two, creating the separate state of Telangana.
Second of the four daughters of legendary actor NT Rama Rao, who founded the TDP and became the chief of Andhra Pradesh, Purandeswari knows at least five languages including Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and French, making her well-suited for the role in a House that sees representatives from various linguistic backgrounds.
Having spent years in the Congress, and served the BJP as its women’s wing in-charge and also as the Andhra unit president in her current role, Purandeswari has friends on both sides of the Lok Sabha. Personal equations have always proven to be a strong force in resolving parliamentary deadlocks — Somnath Chatterjee and PA Sangma have shown it.
With north-south divide having played out politically towards the end of the 17th Lok Sabha, Purandeswari presents an opportunity to the Modi government to make a political outreach to the south.
Fewer women after quota law
PM Modi has been known for his messaging over the past 10 years. As it turned out, the Lok Sabha election returned fewer women to the House of People compared to the 2019 parliamentary polls — 74 against 78. And this came in less than a year, India enacted a law reserving 33% seats for women in legislatures. The law was not applied to this year’s Lok Sabha election.
The selection of ministers for the NDA Cabinet has already raised a few eyebrows pointing to fewer women in the Council of Ministers — seven compared to 11 in the previous ministry. Purandeswari as the Lok Sabha would send a message that the Modi government is committed to empowering women through their appointment to offices of high political importance.
India has had two women as Lok Sabha Speakers — Meira Kumar during the Manmohan Singh government and Sumitra Mahajan during the first Modi government.
The speculation about Purandeswari getting the Speaker’s role carries more currency now as she was originally expected to be part of Modi’s Council of Ministers. She was not named despite her spectacular show in the Lok Sabha polls. As the Andhra BJP chief, she returned with an 80 per cent strike rate — the party won eight of the 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested in alliance with the TDP and actor-politician Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP).
And there’s a TDP connection
The fact that Purandeswari is related to TDP chief Naidu makes her choice as the Lok Sabha Speaker comes as a politically viable option in the NDA. There have been reports suggesting that Naidu has apprehensions that if his party suffers a split-like situation — the ones seen in Maharashtra in the case of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party — a Speaker of his choice would keep his TDP from breaking up.
Purandeswari and Naidu’s wife are sisters — the TDP chief is married to the third daughter of NT Rama Rao.
The office of the Lok Sabha Speaker has always been significant, ranked sixth in the order of precedence at par with the Chief Justice of India, and is the boss of the most parliamentary affairs as the head of the House of People in India. Om Birla’s stint as the Lok Sabha Speaker over the past five years made it even more significant politically as it was marked by unprecedented action against Members of Parliament for disrupting the proceedings and creating ruckus in the House. More than 140 MPs were suspended in one go last year.
With the Opposition bloc, INDIA, having returned to the Lok Sabha with greater numbers than they had in the previous House, there will likely be more political confrontations during the upcoming parliament sessions.
The BJP is reportedly not in favour of parting with the Speaker’s post with its allies, while its partners — both the TDP and the Janata Dal-United of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar are pushing for a change of guard in the office.
So, will Om Birla be replaced by Daggubati Purandeswari as the Lok Sabha Speaker? It’s a question of a few days, literally.
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Will Purandeswari be the next Lok Sabha Speaker? 3 strong reasons
