Examine whether the constitutional office of the Lok Sabha Speaker has become vulnerable to partisan…

Question

Examine whether the constitutional office of the Lok Sabha Speaker has become vulnerable to partisan politics under the current anti-defection regime. What institutional changes are required to ensure the neutrality of the Lok Sabha Speaker in managing a polarised House ?

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

The Lok Sabha Speaker has become vulnerable because the Tenth Schedule made a party-elected presiding officer the final judge of defection, inviting delay and factional rulings. The surest remedy is moving disqualification to an independent tribunal headed by a retired judge, as the Supreme Court suggested in 2020.

**Introduction**

Paragraph 6 of the Tenth Schedule (52nd Amendment, 1985) made the Speaker the final judge of defection, so a presiding officer elected on a party ticket now decides cases that can make or unmake governments.

**How the Anti-defection Regime Exposes the Speaker**

SKETCH: flow | How Partisanship Reaches the Chair
- Party ticket
- Elected Speaker
- Keeps party membership
- Hears defection petitions
- Delay or favour
- Opposition trust lost

1. **Judge in own cause**: Kihoto Hollohan (1992) upheld the Speaker as a tribunal, but a Speaker who needs the party's ticket again must rule against its own recruits.
2. **Strategic delay**: Petitions against a Manipur minister lay pending for nearly three years until the Supreme Court used Article 142 in 2020 to bar him from the Assembly.
3. **Choosing the party**: Despite Subhash Desai (2023), the Maharashtra Speaker's 2024 ruling dismissed every petition after naming one faction the real Shiv Sena, though Somnath Chatterjee's stand in 2008 shows the chair can rise above party.

**Institutional Changes for a Neutral Chair**

1. **Independent adjudicator**: Move disqualification to a tribunal headed by a retired judge, as the Supreme Court suggested in 2020, or to the President and Governors on Election Commission advice, as the Dinesh Goswami Committee (1990) proposed.
2. **Fixed timelines**: Write a three-month limit into the Tenth Schedule.
3. **Narrower whip**: Confine the whip to votes on the government's survival, per the Law Commission's 170th Report (1999).
4. **Detach from party**: Adopt the Westminster practice of the Speaker leaving the party, and fill the Deputy Speaker's post promptly, as Article 93 requires, by convention from the Opposition.

**Conclusion**

The office is vulnerable because the Tenth Schedule placed a judicial task in a partisan seat. Separating adjudication from presiding would restore the chair as guardian of a polarised House.

Examine whether the constitutional office of the Lok Sabha Speaker has become vulnerable to partisan politics under the current anti-defection regime. What institutional changes are required to ensure the neutrality of the Lok Sabha Speaker in managing a polarised House ?

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