Om Birla will be next Lok Sabha Speaker
NEW DELHI : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of Parliament, Om Birla, is likely to be nominated as National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate for the post of the next Lok Sabha speaker.
Two-time MP from Rajasthan’s Kota and a three-time MLA from the Kota South Assembly seat, Birla, has defeated Ramnarain Meena of the Congress by a margin of around 2.79 lakh votes in the 2019 general elections.
Om Birla will be replacing the erstwhile Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who did not contest the recent elections. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, BJP’s Om Birla defeated Congress’s Ramnarayan Meena with a huge margin of over 2.5 lakh votes in the Kota-Bundi Lok Sabha seat.
The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha began on Monday with pro tem Speaker Virendra Singh administering the oath to members. The session will continue on Tuesday. During the session, the passage of the Union Budget and key legislations such as triple talaq will be on top of the agenda for the government.
Om Birla will file nomination for Lok Sabha speaker elections today. As soon as the new Speaker is appointed, Virendra Kumar’s role will cease to exist.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah had collectively come with Om Birla’s name as their choice for the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker. Om Birla (born 23 November 1962) is an MP from the Kota-Bundi constituency of Rajasthan state. He was a three time Member of Rajasthan Legislative Assembly from Kota South.
Om Birla won his first assembly elections contesting from Kota South in 2003. He defeated Shanti Dhariwal from Congress by a margin of 10,101 votes. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, he won his third assembly election against Pankaj Mehta (Congress) by close to 50,000 votes in 2013.
He contested the 16th Lok Sabha elections from Kota-Bundi constituency and secured a victory by a margin of 2,000,782 against a Congress candidate in 2014. Apart from this, he was a member of the Standing Committee on Energy in Parliament, member of Committee on Petitions and Consultative Committee for Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sprung a surprise by picking Kota MP Om Birla for the post of Speaker of the Lower House. Om Birla, unlike many other Speakers in the past, has had a short legislative career as he was elected to the Rajasthan assembly for the first time in 2003.
The nomination of Birla, a two-term Member of Parliament, is being seen as a signal to voters in Rajasthan who helped BJP score a clean sweep for the second time. Conventionally, the post goes to a party which is not a member of the ruling dispensation. In 2014, BJP had handed the post to AIADMK MP M Thambidurai as an olive branch to the Tamil Nadu party, with whom the BJP contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as an alliance partner.
Sources in the BJP said that this time the post could go to BJP’s Bihar ally Janata Dal United (JDU) or someone from Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD). The BJD and BJP contested the Lok sabha elections as main rivals in Odisha and won 12 and 8 seats respectively.
By offering the seat to the BJD, BJP may attempt to get the support of the party’s 5 MPs in Rajya Sabha where despite being the single largest party, BJP is nowhere close to the halfway mark. Since 2014, the Modi government has depended on parties like BJD, YSRCP and TRS to pass important legislation in the Upper House.
Conventionally the heads of the crucial committees like on finance and even the PAC are members of the opposition parties. With the economy on the slide, the constitution of the standing committee on finance is going to be a keenly watched event.
The previous head of the panel, M Veerappa Moily has not returned to the 17th Lok Sabha. However, a BJP leader said, “The Opposition can take the chairmanship of the PAC but there is no rule that the panel on finance has to go to the Opposition.”
