New Delhi:

The Trinamool Congress has decided to support Congress’s K Suresh in the rare election for Lok Sabha Speaker today, according to sources. The Mamata Banerjee-led party had yesterday said it was not consulted before K Suresh was fielded against NDA candidate Om Birla and had termed the decision “unilateral”.

Ms Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee yesterday said, “We were not contacted about this, there was no discussion. Unfortunately, this is a unilateral decision.” Mr Suresh, however, clarified later that Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien and Kalyan Banerjee attended an INDIA bloc meeting last evening and “everything cleared up”.

Mr Birla, a three-time MP and Speaker in the last Lok Sabha, is clearly a frontrunner in this election. Seven MPs have not taken oath yet and the Wayanad seat in Kerala is vacant. This means 535 MPs are eligible to vote today, and 268 is the majority mark. The NDA candidate has the support of 293 MPs and four MPs from YSR Congress Party. The BJP, sources said, is reaching out to other MPs to cross the 300-mark.

The Opposition, on the other hand, has forced a contest to make a political point. Eight-term MP K Suresh has the support of 233 MPs (including Trinamool’s 29), 35 less than the majority mark. 

This is only the third election for the Lok Sabha Speaker’s post after Independence. The Speaker is generally chosen with consensus. This time, the government had reached out to Opposition parties for their support. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge responded that it will support the NDA candidate if the Deputy Speaker is appointed from the Opposition benches. 

The government, however, made it clear that they are not considering a Deputy Speaker post, or the Opposition’s claim to it, for now. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju criticised the Congress for setting conditions. “We appealed to them for support for the Speaker but they said that they would support it but that they wanted the post of Deputy Speaker. We told them that the process of election for both posts is different. The process for choosing the Speaker is conducted before the Deputy Speaker. So it is not right to combine both.”

Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, set to be the Leader of the Opposition, said, “Rajnath Singh called Mallikarjun Kharge and asked him to extend support… entire Opposition said we will support but convention is Deputy Speaker should be from our side. Rajnath Singh said he would call back… but he has not yet…PM is asking for cooperation but our leader is getting insulted.”

It must be noted that the Deputy Speaker’s post, traditionally given to an Opposition MP, was vacant in the last Lok Sabha. In the one before that, the BJP had named its ally AIADMK’s M Thambi Durai.