BJP picks 2-time MP, UPA backs NDA candidate
Two-time member of Parliament Om Birla from Rajasthan is set to be the Speaker of the 17th Lok Sabha. In a surprise move, the BJP on Tuesday nominated him as the candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the constitutional post, to which he is expected to be elected unopposed.
The Congress and its UPA partners have decided to support Birla’s candidature but they have not been forthcoming on the issue of Deputy Speaker. According to sources, the NDA could back someone from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) for the Deputy Speaker’s post.
Birla would be the second two-term MP to be Speaker after GMC Balayogi, who was succeeded in 2002 by Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi, a first-time Lok Sabha member. Balayogi, a TDP MP, was elected as Speaker in 1998 and thereafter in 1999, but he could not complete his term due to his untimely demise.
Conventionally, a senior MP is saddled with the responsibility of Speaker’s post. The Speaker-designate’s predecessor Sumitra Mahajan was an MP from Indore, from where she won for a record eight times before she reached the BJP’s prescribed cut-off age of 75 years for retirement and did not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Birla, the low-profile 57-year-old BJP MP from Kota, is a confidant of party president Amit Shah and is known for his number crunching skills besides being data savvy. “He sends birthday greetings to his voters in Kota,” said sources close to Birla, a hands-on organisational man.
With the NDA having a clear majority in the Lower House, that Birla’s election will be unanimous is a foregone conclusion. A notice has been given to the Lok Sabha Secretariat by the BJP proposing Birla for the post and bringing a motion for his election on Wednesday.
The motion has been backed by all NDA parties, including AIADMK, besides parties like YSR Congress Party and Biju Janata Dal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed the name of Birla for the post, party sources said.
The Opposition did not announce any candidate for the post till Tuesday, the last day to file nomination. “We have talked to the Congress. They won’t oppose,” said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, who had met Congress leader Gujam Nabi Azad after Birla was nominated for the high post.
The Speaker-designate visited Sumitra Mahajan’s house and took her “blessings”. Birla, who was also a three-time MLA from Rajasthan and a vice president of BJP’s youth wing, first won the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 from Kota, Rajasthan, defeating Congress candidate and scion of Royal family Jiyaraj Singh by two lakh votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Birla defeated Congress’s Ramnarayan Meena with a margin of over 2.5 lakh votes from the Kota-Bundi Lok Sabha seat.
