NEW DELHI, Feb 9 — Opposition parties on Monday decided to move a no-confidence motion against Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, accusing him of running the House in a partisan manner and curbing the Opposition’s right to speak.
The decision was taken at a meeting of opposition leaders held at the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Left MP N K Premachandran said the move was triggered after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi was not allowed to speak in the House. “The Speaker did not permit the Leader of Opposition to speak, made derogatory remarks about women members and suspended eight Opposition MPs. This is high-handedness. We are united against this and will move a no-confidence motion,” he said.
Congress MP K C Venugopal alleged that parliamentary proceedings were being conducted in favour of the government. “The Lok Sabha is being run like a preserve of the government. This is unacceptable in a democracy,” he said.
The Lok Sabha has seen repeated disruptions over the past few days after Rahul Gandhi was stopped from making references to an unpublished book related to the 2020 India-China Line of Actual Control standoff in Galwan. Speaker Om Birla ruled that Gandhi could not quote from an unpublished work.
Opposition leaders acknowledged that the motion would be symbolic, as they do not have the numbers in the Lok Sabha to carry it through. However, they said it reflects their collective opposition to the Speaker’s conduct and the manner in which the House is being run.
The Opposition had earlier attempted a similar no-confidence motion against then Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar in December 2024, which was rejected on procedural grounds, including the absence of the mandatory 14-day notice.
The latest standoff follows an incident last week when the Speaker said he had advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to enter the Lok Sabha amid chaos, claiming that women Opposition MPs had gathered around the Prime Minister’s seat before he was to reply to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address on January 28. The Prime Minister’s reply was deferred and later delivered in the Rajya Sabha.
A no-confidence motion against the Speaker is a parliamentary move through which members formally express loss of trust in the Speaker’s conduct, though it does not automatically remove them unless passed by a majority.