With a strength of 200 MLAs, the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly is holding its 8th Session with vacant posts of Deputy Speaker, Leader of Opposition and Chief Whip.
Just about nine months are left for the completion of five years of the Gehlot government, and the current budget session of the House is about to complete its business later this month. The next and the last session of the assembly can be called for a few days in September this year.
The Leader of Opposition post is lying vacant from February 16, 2023 after the resignation of senior BJP leader G C Kataria who was appointed the Governor of Assam.
Similarly the post of Chief Whip is lying vacant after the resignation by Dr Mahesh Joshi on February 18, 2023 as he maintained ‘one man, one post’ formula retaining his Cabinet ministry of Public Health and Engineering Department (PHED).
The BJP is in a fix to decide the Leader of Opposition out of its flock of 70 MLAs (minus Kataria) and running the House proceedings with its Deputy Leader R S Rathore.
The BJP Legislative Party meeting has tentatively decided that Rathore should hold the work of LoO till a new one is appointed. In the presence of former Chief Minister and party Vice-President Vasundhra Raje and the State BJP President Satish Poonia on the Opposition benches, it would be a tough task for their party high command to choose one name for the LoO post.
When contacted Dy Chief Whip to reveal any possibility of filling Chief Whip post, Choudhary told SNS that the issue would have to be taken up by the Chief Minister and Congress High Command to choose a name for Chief Whip post.
“I am very well managing the floor and making my presence inside the House the whole day. Rather, the major worry should be on the BJP as the Leader of Opposition post is more important to be filled up by the party to challenge the ruling Government during its ongoing budget session. But there are a number of groups within the BJP, who to choose”, Choudhary claimed.
The major lacuna appears to be the post of Deputy Speaker where neither the Congress desired nor the Opposition parties (BJP, RLP, CPIM, BTP) insisted the government to
fill up the post since 2018 when the Gehlot took over the reins. Since 31.3.1952, the House has 19 Deputy Speakers and in many regimes the very post was filled up very late and the House ran on the Speakers’ ruling.
The last Deputy Speaker was Rao Rajendra Singh (BJP) who held this post till 15/1/2019 when the Congress government took over with its third time Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
There were many times, the Deputy Speaker post was vacant for many years especially during 14/10/1982 to 29/3/1985, and 14/12/1992 to 27/9/1994 in the Shiv Charan Mathur (Congress), and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (BJP) governments respectively.
Earlier there was a trend in Parliament and the state assemblies that the Deputy Speaker post is ‘unanimously’ given to the major Opposition party, but that trend was not followed now for many decades, Namnarayan Meena, former Deputy Speaker in Gehlot’s second term, commented while talking to The Statesman.
“To have a democratic way of ruling in the assembly/parliament, and to have a cordial atmosphere in the House among the political parties, the Deputy Speaker post is preferably given to the Opposition party. But it is a more unfortunate situation that the deputy speaker post is lying unfilled,” Meena said.
Had the Congress government appointed the Deputy Speaker, a number of other committees would also have been set up under the chairmanship of the Deputy Speaker to solve many tasks.