The opposition parties have decided to present a joint candidate for the position of vice president in the Lok Sabha. The decision was made at a meeting of the congressional party parliament strategy group.
Rajya Sabha’s vice-president post was vacated after Janata Dal (United) MP Harivansh retired in April this year.
The vice president could not be elected at the Lok Sabha budget session that ended in March. And due to the Covid-19 pandemic, legislative procedures were affected so a discussion could not be held on it.
Now, a discussion is expected in the monsoon session of Parliament that begins on September 14. The last date to submit nominations is September 11.
This is a departure from the last four House terms, when the post had been filled within a few months after the new Lok Sabha was formed.
Also read: Only paper ballots to vote in the monsoon session of Parliament
Congressional Prime Minister Sayeed was elected vice president in December 1999, just over a month after national elections in which the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) emerged victorious and Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister. In 2004, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) overthrew the NDA and Shiromani Akali Dal’s Charanjit Singh Atwal (SAD) took office two months after the 14th Lok Sabha was established.
BJP veteran Kariya Munda was elected to the position in 2009, again in two months. In 2014, after the BJP won the general election with the majority under Narendra Modi, the NDA offered the position to a friendly party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), and its leader M Thambidurai was unanimously elected vice president in August, almost three months after the constitution of the 16th Lok Sabha.
The vice president presides over the Lok Sabha when the speaker is absent from the house. In the current Lok Sabha, in the absence of President Om Birla, members of a panel of presidents preside over the House.
Congress decided to include the election of the vice president as part of its parliamentary strategy. The party’s high-profile group met on Tuesday to formulate the party’s strategy for the next session of Parliament.
The party parliament strategy group meeting was chaired by Congress Speaker Sonia Gandhi and was attended by Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Gaurav Gogoi, K Suresh, Manickam Tagore, and Ravneet Singh Bittu.
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