Balayogi Installed As Speaker

The BJP and its allies managed to instal GMC Balayogi of the Telugu Desam, as the Speaker of the twelfth Lok Sabha yesterday but ended up dividing the House sharply in the bargain.

The speeches with which Balayogis election was received were peppered with jibes and antagonism.

The bitterness against the BJP, now firmly in command of a House majority, seemed to have overwhelmed other enmities. Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav went and sat next to Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav and thumped his desk when Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati spoke.

Both Yadavs told their party colleagues to be quiet when they wanted to protest against Janata Dal leader Ram Vilas Paswan being given the floor before them. They lead larger groups in the House and have fought Paswan politically in the recent past.

 

On the other hand, few on the treasury benches applauded when Opposition speakers praised former Speaker PA Sangmas performance. Home Minister LK Advani, Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and parliamentary affairs minister Madan Lal Khurana repeatedly motioned the treasury benches to be quiet but Mamata Banerjee and other Trinamul Congress members were quickly moved to fury.

A group of leaders as diverse as Chandrashekhar, HD Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, Somnath Chatterjee, both Yadavs, Paswan, Murasoli Maran P Chidambaram and Geeta Mukherjee joined Sharad Pawar to sign a press statement.

Noting that the calibre of the candidate should be the cardinal criterion, it said that the office of Speaker has been used as a bargaining counter for the purpose of boosting the strength of the minority ruling formation on the eve of the confidence vote.

In the House, Prime Minister AB Vajpayees effort to highlight Balayogis Dalit antecedents came a cropper as Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati interrupted.

As Vajpayees backers heckled her, the Opposition turned the tables on Vajpayee, accusing him of stifling a Dalit womans voice.

The new Speaker was reduced to saying: Arre, arre as he urged members to hear the Prime Minister. A Dalit woman will be silenced, shouted Congress member Mukul Wasnik, joined vociferously by Ajit Jogi and Vilas Muttemwar of the Congress and Arif Mohammed Khan of the BSP, who repeatedly sought to raise a point of propriety - that the Prime Minister should let a woman speak.

Mayawati sought to ask if Vajpayee would misuse the Speakers post, as in Uttar Pradesh. UP Assembly Speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi has ruled that the BSPs whip during Chief Minister Kalyan Singhs confidence vote was illegal and upheld the split in the BSPs group in the house, even though far less than the legally required third of the group split.

Mayawati led a walkout by her five members, as the treasury lustily shouted jao, jao (go, go). Later, former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar left the House abruptly when Balayogi called former speaker Shivraj Patil to speak.

Both Chandrashekhar and Patil had asked for the floor.

Opposition leaders repeatedly told Vajpayee that the manner in which the Speaker had been chosen had exposed his recent call for consensus.

Vajpayee referred to it as a unanimous election, perhaps because it was passed by voice vote and because Sharad Pawar, the leader of the opposition, followed the tradition of escorting the new Speaker, along with the leader of the house, to the chair. But the opposition loudly denied this immediately.