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Kota MP Om Birla filed nomination for the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker as an NDA consensus candidate, a position he held in the previous House.
JD(U) leader and Union minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh told reporters that Birla’s name was decided unanimously by all NDA parties and that senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh also reached out to the opposition for their support.
Soon after Om Birla’s name was fielded by NDA , TMC MP Mahua Moitra tweeted on X
Om Birla Ji is NDA speaker candidate. Hope he realises that with 234 of us this time his “Naw Baithiye” won’t be as easy to implement.
— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) June 25, 2024
The opposition INDIA bloc has fielded Congress leader K Suresh as its candidate for the speaker’s post.
On Lok Sabha Speaker post issue, Congress MP from Amethi, KL Sharma says, “They are not abiding by the Constitution. As the INDIA Alliance is strong right now, we will oppose the wrong…It is the tradition of a healthy democracy to give the Deputy Speaker post to the Opposition. So, they should do it.”
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju told ANI outside parliament, “For the last 2 days, we have contacted the major opposition parties and we have talked about the post of Speaker. Since the country became independent, there has never been an election of the Speaker and we want the Speaker to be elected unanimously and unopposed, so we contacted and appealed to them. Today we had a meeting with Congress leaders, we appealed to them for support for the Speaker but they said that they will support but they want the post of Deputy Speaker. We told them that the process of election for both posts is different, so it is not right to combine both…The attitude of the Congress party was clear that if we did not ask for conditions, they would not support the post of Speaker. I appeal again that they should think about keeping in mind the dignity of the post of Speaker, we have the numbers but still, we are requesting that there should be no election for the post of Speaker because this post does not belong to any party…”
