The Opposition will this time insist on the Lok Sabha having a deputy Speaker.

The Narendra Modi government had left the office of deputy Speaker unfilled for the entire duration of the 17th Lok Sabha, preferring instead to function with a panel of chairpersons to step in for the Speaker.

The post of deputy Speaker is usually given to the Opposition but the Modi dispensation decided to do away with this practice in the just dissolved House as part of its politics to deny space to all opposing voices.

In the 16th Lok Sabha — during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first stint at the Centre — the AIADMK’s M. Thambi Durai was unanimously elected to the post in an apparent effort by the BJP to shore up its numbers in the Rajya Sabha where it was in minority in 2014.

Having carved out a bigger space for itself in the general elections at the expense of the NDA in general and the BJP in particular, the Opposition finds itself better positioned to insist on getting its due and intends to throw its hat in the ring for the post of deputy Speaker.

The post of deputy Speaker is provided in Article 93 of the Constitution.

“The House of the People shall, as soon as may be, choose two members of the House to be respectively Speaker and Deputy Speaker thereof and, so often as the office of Speaker or Deputy Speaker becomes vacant, the House shall choose another member to be Speaker or Deputy Speaker, as the case may be,’’ it states.

The five years of the 17th Lok Sabha is the longest the Lower House of Parliament has functioned without a deputy Speaker.