Today’s election for the post of the Lok Sabha Speaker, already tilted in the government’s favour, can push the Opposition further down, with five of its 232 MPs yet to take oath.
The oath pending, they cannot vote in the election. The list includes stalwarts like Congress’s Shashi Tharoor and Trinamool Congress’s actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha.
There are also a few others — Deepak Adhikari and Nurul Islam of Trinamool Congress and Afzhal Ansari of the Samajwadi Party and two Independents. It is not yet known why the oath of some of these leaders is pending.
Afzhal Ansari is the elder brother of criminal-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari. Sentenced to four years in prison, his jail term was put on hold by the Allahabad High Court in view of the election.
The case will be heard when the court opens in July. If the court upholds his sentence, he will lose his membership of parliament.
Victory in Speaker election is based on the number of MPs present and voting – which means the absence of these seven MPs will bring down the total number and therefore the halfway mark.
While the Opposition won 232 seats, it will miss five MPs in its ranks, bringing it down to 227 – assuming the rest turn up and vote. The majority mark will stand at 269.
The NDA, already with 293 MPs, is also expected to have the support of the four MPs of YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, which, like Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal, had lent issue-based support to the government.
Now, routed in the Odisha assembly election, the BJD has said it will not provide any support to the BJP. But the YSR Congress, though trounced by BJP ally Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, is sticking to its stance.
For the BJP, which already has enough MPs in its corner to ensure a victory of Om Birla — who is contesting against Opposition candidate K Suresh for a second stint at the job — the question is one of optics.
The BJP is also working to bring Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the Akali Dal, Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Azad, and Shillong MP Ricky Andrew Syngkon on board. With their support, the party aims to surpass the psychologically significant threshold of 300 seats.
The party, unlike in 2014 and 2019, has been unable to achieve majority on its own and is dependent on Mr Naidu’s TDP and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United to keep its head above the halfway mark. A decisive victory in the Lok Sabha is expected to boost morale in the party camp.