Speaker pro tem

The office of the Speaker becomes vacant immediately before the first meeting of the new Lok Sabha ( article 94 of the Constitution ).  In such a case, the duties of the Speaker are to be performed by a Member of the House appointed for this purpose by the President as Speaker pro tem.

The position is often filled by the senior-most Members( seniority in terms of their tenure in the Lok Sabha), who serves in that capacity until a permanent Speaker is appointed.

His role includes administering oath to newly elected members and aid parliament to choose new speaker. His office get dissolved when new speaker is appointed.

Procedure of appointment:

As soon as the new Government is formed,  Legislative I Section prepares a list of the senior-most Members( seniority in terms of their tenure in the Lok Sabha). The list is then submitted to the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs/ Prime Minister for identifying a Member as Speaker pro tem. After the approval of the Prime Minister and with the consent of these Members,  Minister submits a note to the President seeking his approval to the appointment of the Speaker pro tem and the other three Members.

There is no mention of the Speaker pro tem in the Constitution.

Recent issue is over not appointing senior most member as a speaker pro tem.

Handbook on the Working of Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, The Economic Times

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Russian parliament passed a bill to revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Interstellar space and Interstellar Probes ( Voyager and New Horizons Missions )

UPSC IAS Daily Current Affairs ( 05 - 12 - 2023 ) by UniFocus IAS