Om Birla likely to be Lok Sabha Speaker for 2nd time in a row

Five days ago, Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Om Birla inspected the ongoing construction work in the Parliament complex and told officials from the Central Public Works Department to finish by July 3. “I will review it again on July 3. I will not hear any excuse if it’s not finished,” he added. For many Lok Sabha officials close to Birla, his display of authority and the timeline he set was the first signal that he might continue as the Lok Sabha Speaker.

On Tuesday, that hint solidified into fact. After the Congress’s Balram Jakhar in 1985, Kota parliamentarian Birla is set to be the first speaker in 39 years to get re-elected to the Lok Sabha’s highest office. But the 61-year-old’s tryst with history will be a bit more interesting: He will contest against Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance candidate Kodikkunil Suresh, an eight-time MP and Dalit leader of the Congress from Kerala who is likely to bag a sizeable number of votes.

After 1952, 1967 and 1976, this will be the fourth contest for the speaker’s post.

Birla, born in 1962, was a two-term MP when he was made the Lok Sabha Speaker in 2019, a position usually reserved for senior leaders. His style of political communication, too, was different. One of his key outreaches was to distribute blankets and slippers to the poor.

“Once I was travelling in Kota and noticed a person walking barefoot in the peak of summer. I stopped my car to give him a pair of slippers. From that day, I keep pairs of slippers in my car to distribute during summer,” Birla told HT.

Similarly, at a government hospital, Birla noticed that a three-member family was trying to keep themselves warm under a single quilt as they didn’t have the money to rent another. “Birla started a kambal-nidhi programme to distribute blankets and quilts and also set up blanket banks in government hospitals for the poor,” said his aide, requesting anonymity.

During his tenure, the Lok Sabha’s efficiency improved , Parliament withstood the waves of Covid-19, passed landmark legislation such as the women’s reservation bill and scrapped Article 370. Twice, the Lower House sat beyond midnight to complete business with Birla in the chair and more than ever, women and first-time MPs got a chance to participate.

But Opposition leaders also argued that in the 17th Lok Sabha, 35% of the laws were passed with less than an hour of discussion in the Lower House and only 16% bills were referred to House panels for review. (According to PRS Legislative Research, this is lower than corresponding figures for the previous three Lok Sabhas).

More than 100 MPs were suspended from the Lok Sabha, and 206 across both Houses. Opposition leaders also frequently complained that Sansad TV mostly focused on the treasury benches and microphones would be turned off during Opposition’s important interventions.

The shifting of Parliament from the colonial-era building to the new building is perhaps the biggest highlight of Birla’s first tenure.

His political career started as the district president of the BJP’s youth wing in Kota in 1987. He won the Kota assembly seat for the first time in 2003 and remained a Rajasthan lawmaker till 2014 when he won his first Lok Sabha election from Kota-Bundi Lok Sabha. Ten years later, into his third term, Birla filed his nomination on Tuesday for his re-election to the top post of the Lower House.

On June 19, 2019 he was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the 17th Lok Sabha; this time, however, there will be a contest between Birla and INDIA bloc’s K Suresh. During his tenure, the productivity of the Lok Sabha was 97%, the highest in 25 years.

“The productivity of the fourth session of the 17th Lok Sabha, held amid the Corona epidemic, was 167%, which is the highest in the history of the Lok Sabha. ₹801 crore was saved by encouraging financial discipline in the operation of Parliament. During the previous Lok Sabha, 222 bills became law, which is the highest in the last three Lok Sabhas and a total of 440.54 hours were spent discussing the bills, which is the highest in the last four Lok Sabhas,” said a Lok Sabha document.

In his tenure, a total of 2,910 members participated in the law-making process — the highest in the last four Lok Sabhas. The Parliament Library, the second-largest in India, was opened to the public from 17 August 2022 while rare and old footage of parliamentary proceedings were uploaded.

In the very first session in 2019, all first-time members got an opportunity to speak and during the first session’s Zero Hour, members raised 1,066 subjects — a record for any one session in the history of the Lok Sabha. Another record was set when members raised 161 issues in Zero Hour on July 18, 2019 (the highest in one day).

While many MPs complained about the curtailing of their speeches, Birla was the first Speaker to provide MPs clippings of their speeches to help them circulate it on social media — a key step to enhance the popularity of speeches. He also started a new system of briefing sessions for MPs on bills or policies to improve the quality of debate.

Birla held a number of meetings with panchayat leaders, pushed for reforms to bring parity between Lok Sabha and state assembly rules, and helped digitise discussions held in Parliament from 1854 to 2024.

Key bills passed during his tenure include the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill, 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019, Muslim Women Marriage Rights Protection Bill 2019, Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021 and the three new codes to replace colonial-era laws. The country also got its first Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and in the first session of the Lok Sabha in the new building, the long-pending women’s reservation bill was passed.