(Bloomberg) — India’s opposition is gearing up to play a bigger role in parliament Rahul Gandhi to take a key position and field his own candidate for Speaker of the House of Representatives in a rare contest for the post.
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Gandhi was elected leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, his party said on Tuesday, a post that fell vacant in the first decade of his premiership. Narendra Modi‘s rule. The opposition fielded its own candidate for speaker, a largely symbolic move that was defeated on Wednesday by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, who chose incumbent Om Birla for the role.
The opposition alliance, led by Gandhi’s Indian National Congress, prevented the BJP from winning an outright majority in the recent elections. The opposition won about 230 of the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament, while the Congress Party won 99 seats on its own – the first time in a decade that an opposition party won more than 10% of the seats needed to win a to submit a claim. to the position of opposition leader.
This will be the first constitutional post for Gandhi, 54, a five-term lawmaker who comes from a long line of leaders who have dominated politics since India’s independence from Britain. He is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first leader after independence, and his father and grandmother were former prime ministers.
As leader of the opposition, Gandhi will be involved in the selection of India’s election commissioners, the head of India’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other constitutional positions. He will have the same rank as a minister, allowing him to discuss national issues with visiting heads of state.
“It is very important that the voice of the Opposition is allowed to be represented in this House,” Gandhi told lawmakers on Wednesday in his first speech as Leader of the Opposition. “These elections have shown that the people of India expect the opposition to defend the Constitution.”
Modi often attacks Gandhi for his privileged background, calling him a prince who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Gandhi tried to shake that image by going on week-long yatras, or foot journeys, in 2022 and this year, crisscrossing the country to connect with mostly rural voters. The opposition’s successful campaign during the elections largely focused on improving the lives of poor and lower-caste individuals, and creating more jobs for the youth.
The BJP-led government’s choice of Birla as Speaker of Parliament shows that Modi is looking for continuity despite his party’s worse-than-expected performance in the elections. Modi also retained his top cabinet ministers in their roles, including Nirmala Sitharaman as finance minister.
“Mr. Modi is someone who wants to send a message both at home and abroad that it is ‘business as usual,’” said Rasheed Kidwai, a visiting scholar at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. “He doesn’t want to send a signal of weakness or compromise.”
Parliament has held elections for the position of Speaker only a handful of times in post-independence India’s history; the last election took place in 1998.
–With the help of Ruchi Bhatia and Swati Gupta.
(Updates with comments from Gandhi.)
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