The Congress failure to win 10 per cent of the seats — the minimum required to secure the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) position — has awakened ambitions in the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that plans to approach the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to collectively make a bid for the post.
Congress sources said that once the Speaker is elected and the new members are sworn in, the “logical next step” would be to present the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as a pre-poll alliance to make a case for securing the LoP status. The Congress-led UPA has 62 MPs (the Congress 44, the Nationalist Congress Party 6, the Rashtriya Janata Dal 4, the All India United Democratic Front 3, the Indian Union Muslim League 2, the Kerala Congress-Mani 1, the Revolutionary Socialist Party 1 and the Sikkim Democratic Front 1).
Asked about the Trinamool bid to present itself as a group with the AIADMK, a senior Congress functionary said a pre-poll alliance has to get precedence over a post-poll understanding. The AIADMK has 37 members and the TMC 34.
While TMC leader Derek O Brien hinted at his party making a bid for LoP along with the AIADMK in a television show, another senior leader from West Bengal confirmed that such a move was on the cards. There was no word from the AIADMK on this count but ahead of the elections party chief Jayalalithaa called up West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The speculation then was that the AIADMK was warming up to Ms. Banerjee’s idea of a federal front.
The Speaker will be the final authority on both contentions. The current position based on a ruling by a former Speaker is that even a pre-poll alliance – which makes the 10 per cent cut-off – is unacceptable.
In 1984, when the Congress got 404 seats in the Lok Sabha and the Telugu Desam Party emerged as the second largest party with 30 seats, it was not given the LoP status on the premise that Direction 121 of pre-Independence days mandated that only a political party with 10 per cent membership of the House would be recognised as a party.
There is no consensus on this interpretation. Former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash Kashyap insists that the 10 per cent requirement is a long-standing precedent and “parliamentary systems follow precedents and practices.”
But his successor P. D. T. Achary maintains that “The Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977” defines the LoP as leader of the “party in Opposition to the government having the greatest numerical strength and recognised as such” by the Speaker.
“This Act should have been invoked in 1984,” he said.
