Consider the following statements regarding with speaker of Lok Sabha :
(a) He hold office during the pleasure of the President.
(b) He need not be a member of the House at the time of his election.
(

Question

Consider the following statements regarding with speaker of Lok Sabha :
(a) He hold office during the pleasure of the President.
(b) He need not be a member of the House at the time of his election.
(c) He Presides over a joint sitting of the two houses of Parliament.
Which of the statement/s given above is/are correct ?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), Only (c). Read the closing line before anything else: it asks which statements are CORRECT, and the word is printed in bold in both the English and the Marathi columns. Only three statements are printed here, (a) to (c), and exactly one of them survives scrutiny. Statement (c) is true. Article 118(4) provides that the Speaker of the House of the People, or in his absence such person as may be determined by the rules of procedure of that House, shall preside over a joint sitting of the two Houses. This is a genuine constitutional peculiarity and the reason the statement is here: at a joint sitting summoned by the President under Article 108 to resolve a deadlock over an ordinary bill, the presiding officer is the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and not the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, so the head of the lower House presides over the members of both. India has held three such sittings — on the Dowry Prohibition Bill in 1961, the Banking Service Commission (Repeal) Bill in 1978 and the Prevention of Terrorism Bill in 2002 — and none of them concerned a money bill or a constitutional amendment bill, for which no joint sitting is available. Statement (a) is false. The Speaker does not hold office during the pleasure of the President; that expression belongs to a Minister under Article 75(2), to the Attorney-General under Article 76(4) and to a Governor under Article 156(1), none of whom the Speaker resembles. Under Article 94 he vacates office if he ceases to be a member of the House, may resign by writing addressed to the Deputy Speaker, and may be removed only by a resolution of the House of the People passed by a majority of all the then members of the House, of which fourteen days' notice must be given. Statement (b) is false as well, and its negative wording — 'He need not be a member' — is part of a statement and not the question's own ask. Article 93 requires the House of the People, as soon as may be, to choose two MEMBERS of the House to be Speaker and Deputy Speaker, so membership is a precondition of election, not something acquired afterwards. With (a) and (b) out and (c) in, option (3) is the only possible answer.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This choice keeps statement (a) and discards the one true statement. The doctrine of holding office 'during the pleasure of the President' is real, but it attaches to officers who are part of the executive or are appointed by it — a Minister of the Union under Article 75(2), the Attorney-General for India under Article 76(4), a Governor of a State under Article 156(1). The Speaker belongs to the legislature and is protected from the executive precisely so that he can preside over it impartially. Article 94 sets out the only three ways his office ends: he ceases to be a member of the House, he resigns in writing to the Deputy Speaker, or the House removes him by a resolution passed by a majority of all the then members after fourteen days' notice. The President has no part in any of the three, and a Speaker even continues in office after the House is dissolved, until immediately before the first sitting of the next House.  (b) This choice takes both of the false statements and leaves out the true one, so it is wrong twice over. Statement (a) confuses the Speaker with the officers who serve at the President's pleasure; statement (b) confuses him with the Chairman of the Council of States. The second confusion is the more interesting, because it is exactly right about the other House: the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is the Vice-President of India, who is elected by an electoral college of the members of both Houses and is NOT a member of the House he presides over. The Lok Sabha works on the opposite principle. Article 93 directs the House to choose two of its own members as Speaker and Deputy Speaker, so a person must already be a member of the House of the People before he can be elected to the Chair, and losing that membership costs him the office.  (d) This is the trap that catches a well-prepared candidate, because half of it is right. Statement (c) about presiding over a joint sitting is correct, and a candidate who verifies it and then does not test statement (b) with the same care will take this choice. But statement (b) fails on the plain words of Article 93, which requires the House of the People to choose two MEMBERS of the House as Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Its plausibility comes from an analogy the Constitution does not draw: the presiding officer of the upper House is an outsider to it, so a candidate reasons that presiding officers in general need not be members. The lesson generalises well beyond this question — in a statement set, a statement that is true is never a reason to accept the ones printed beside it, and each has to be tested against its own provision.

Concept: The Speaker of the House of the People is created by Article 93 and governed by Articles 94 to 96 and 100. Article 93 requires the House, as soon as may be, to choose two of its members as Speaker and Deputy Speaker, and to fill either office when it becomes vacant. Article 94 provides that either of them vacates office on ceasing to be a member of the House, may resign in writing addressed to the other, and may be removed by a resolution of the House passed by a majority of all the then members after fourteen days' notice; a proviso keeps the Speaker in office after a dissolution until immediately before the first meeting of the new House, so that the office is never vacant. Article 95 allows the Deputy Speaker, or a member appointed under the rules, to perform the Speaker's duties when the office is vacant or the Speaker is absent. Article 96 keeps the Speaker out of the Chair while a resolution for his own removal is under consideration, though he may speak and take part and may vote in the first instance, but not in the event of an equality of votes. Article 100 gives him no ordinary vote but a casting vote when the House is equally divided. Beyond these, Article 110(3) makes his certificate that a bill is a money bill final, Article 118(4) puts him in the Chair at a joint sitting, and the Tenth Schedule makes him the authority to decide questions of disqualification on the ground of defection in his House. His salary and allowances are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India, which places them beyond the annual vote of the House and is another guarantee of his independence.

State PCS 2021 Q85 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2021 Q85 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer