Somnath Chatterjee’s advice to his successor as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Meira Kumar, to resign from her party is seemingly born of his own bitter personal experience rather than a desire to set a precedent. Evidently, the idea is new to him, for he hadn’t thought of leaving the CPI(M) when he became the Speaker. It was only when his party asked him to step down on the eve of the debate on the nuclear deal that he realised that his non-partisan approach to his job was not being appreciated by the Marxists because they needed his vote. As is known, his refusal to resign led to his expulsion from the CPI(M). It also made him free to air his views, which have included sharp criticism of his former party.
However, the episode may have also moulded his perception of the Speaker’s office in a way that ignores existing conventions. Although the Speaker of the House of Commons cuts all his links with his party on assuming office, this hasn’t been the practice in India. It is for this reason that Meira Kumar has declined to accept Chatterjee’s advice. The rationale behind such a stance is that a presiding officer, who may be not only the Speaker but also the Deputy Speaker and any senior member of the House, automatically and instinctively adopts a non-partisan attitude when he or she occupies the high chair. Despite being a member of a party, the moment the person sits in it, he abides by the rules and conventions of parliamentary procedure where partisanship has no place.
To do this, there is no need to resign. It is the experience as a parliamentarian and one’s consciousness of upholding the democratic tradition of reasonableness which is the sole guiding factor. It is a matter of pride that whoever has occupied the ornate chair in all these years in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha — even temporarily in the Speaker’s and the Deputy Speaker’s absence — has always been fully alive to these responsibilities. It has also been virtually the same in the state assemblies where no serious complaints have been made of egregious partisanship. Nor has there been any need for formal resignations. Chatterjee’s episode remains the only one where his commitment to the Speaker’s duties earned the wrath of his party. But that is probably because the CPI(M)’s instincts are more attuned to people’s democracies instead of parliamentary ones.