Executive Weaponization of the Speaker’s Office

**Ansh Arora

This contribution highlights how India’s growing democratic decay is catalysed by the executive ‘weaponizing’ the speaker’s office, especially by indiscriminately suspending opposition members, to manipulate the balance of power within the House and pass controversial bills in their absence.

I analyse it with a comparative analysis from UK and Israel, proposing a system of ‘Legislative Due Process’, where a law so enacted would be procedurally illegitimate and open for judicial scrutiny on the grounds of non-deliberation and lack of parliamentary participation, which I argue, form the fundamental principles of a parliamentary democracy.

I. Introduction 

The Speaker’s Office has been held in the highest esteem across parliamentary traditions. She is the supreme arbiter of parliamentary law, and her decisions stand as precedents in the parliamentary case law. 

However, this unchallengeable power is often misused, rather ‘weaponised’ to silence the opposition’s criticisms within the house, primarily due to the Speaker’s partisan tendencies, making her office a hotbed for ‘executarian’ decision-making. The present contribution aims not just to analyse the constitutionality and morality behind the Speaker’s powers to suspend her fellow parliamentarians but also to argue for a ‘legislative due-process’ to be followed within the House.

This issue becomes all the more pressing, post the historic en masse suspension of 146 MPs during the 2023 winter session of the Parliament, which went unchallenged. The suspensions were imposed following the opposition’s demand for an explanation from the Home Minister regarding a major security breach in Parliament, wherein two individuals entered the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery and released smoke canisters.This event clearly demonstrates the extent to which the Speaker’s unfettered powers can be exercised. Further, this episode is not to be construed as an isolated aberration, but rather a subset of India’s broader trend of democratic backsliding, as evidenced by its consistent categorization as an ‘electoral autocracy’ in the V-Dem Democracy Reports since 2017.

The 2025 report identifies India as ‘one of the worst autocratizers’ globally, and warns that the level of liberal democracy enjoyed by the average Indian has regressed to the levels last seen in 1975, when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency.

II. What does the Rulebook say?

The Speaker’s authority to suspend his fellow parliamentarians is derived from the Rules of Procedure & Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha [“Rules of Procedure”] framed by the Parliament itself, under the authority of Article 118 of the Constitution. 

Rule 374 empowers the Speaker to suspend a member for defying his Chair’s authority or willfully obstructing the House’s proceedings by passing a formal motion through the House. However, Rule 374-A, specially introduced in 2001, to deal with instances of ‘grave disorder’ grants the Speaker unilateral power to automatically suspend a member for upto five sittings or the remainder of the session, whichever is shorter, without requiring a formal motion. 

Rule 374-A could be seen in action during the 2023 winter session suspensions, arming the speaker with a free-hand in unilaterally suspending 146 MPs, without the necessity of securing a formal motion passed by the House.

III. The English Solution to the Speaker’s Partisan Politics

Such en masse suspensions can materialize even in a mature democracy like India, as we are yet to evolve healthy conventions surrounding Speakership. In India, unlike Britain, the Speaker continues to be a member of the ruling party, which creates a reciprocal dependency wherein the ruling party anticipates political support from the Speaker, who, correspondingly, relies upon the ruling party’s backing for her continued tenure.

The solution to this problem can be seen in action in Britain, where it lies in two conventions. The first being that the speaker relinquishes the membership of her parent party upon assuming the office of the Speaker. This allows her to function impartially and neutrally. The second being that no party fields their candidate against her in the forthcoming elections, i.e. he gets elected unopposed. Therefore, it is customary for the previous Speaker to be re-elected even though his party may no longer be in power.

Many scholars have time & again advocated for adopting such conventions in India. For instance, in 1967, Madhu Limaye, a noted social activist, wrote to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suggesting that upon election, the Speaker ought to resign from their political party, formally declare impartiality in the House and represent either a fictitious constituency or none at all. Further, upon retirement, they should be granted a lifelong pension and barred from holding any public office, save that of the President. Similar views have been echoed by G.V Mavlankar, the first speaker after independence, who argued that it is perhaps contradictory to expect the Speaker to remain as insular as the English Speaker, until corresponding conventions surrounding Speakership are adopted. 

However, such proposals, though repeatedly voiced, have not been brought to implementation, suggesting a lack of political incentive for the same.

IV. Judicial Review of the Legislative Process 

Given the Legislature’s continued reluctance to implement reforms surrounding Speakership, judicial review of the legislative process emerges as a necessary, albeit controversial, recourse. 

However, a significant roadblock in the pursuit of the same lies in the form of Article 122 (1) of the Constitution, which bars any form of Judicial Scrutiny of the internal proceedings of the Legislature. The Supreme Court, while grappling with the same, in Kihotto Holohan, admitted to the limited grounds for judicial review under Article 122, confined to jurisdictional errors like lack of authority or non-compliance with rules of natural justice and colourable exercise of power tainted by extraneous or irrelevant considerations. (¶101)

Drawing from the same, the Court in Alagaapuram R. Mohanraj v. T.N. Legislative Assembly, invalidated the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly’s resolution approving the ten-day suspension of six of its members. The suspension was based on an alleged physical assault on the Speaker by the MLAs in question. However, the Court held that the Privileges Committee had failed to observe the principles of natural justice, particularly by not furnishing the video footage that formed the basis of the suspension, in effect depriving these MLAs of a fair opportunity to defend themselves.

Similarly, in Ashish Shelar v. The Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, the Court revoked the one-year suspension of twelve MLAs, deeming it to be ‘manifestly arbitrary’ and ‘irrational’ as it exceeded the maximum period prescribed for suspension under the Assembly’s rules of procedure. The Court further emphasized that such prolonged suspensions had no nexus with the objective of restoring order within the House. It rather had the effect of depriving a significant segment of the electorate of representation and would also alter the balance of power within the House. 

While the decision in Ashish Shelar effectively addresses the temporal dimension of legislative suspensions, there remains a notable gap in jurisprudence concerning the magnitude or scale of such suspensions. Yet, the practical consequences of both excessive duration and mass suspensions are substantively similar: they undermine representative democracy and fracture the opposition by reducing their ability to participate in debates on vote on contentious Bills. 

This executive takeover of the House, though well within the scope of the Constitution, is opposed to the spirit of Constitutionalism. It leads to a situation, often known as an ‘Elective Dictatorship’ where the majority executive muzzles the minority opposition, essentially leading to a lack of representation for a significant amount of population, ironically those minorities who need it the most.

To address such issues, the author proposes the mechanism of ‘Legislative Due Process’, wherein the courts must adopt a ‘constitutional protectionist’ role and intervene when such executive encroachment reaches a level of malfunction.

V. Legislative Due Process: A Missing Ground for Judicial Review

The term ‘Legislative Due Process’ has not been defined in existing scholarship. In the author’s opinion, it means that a process wherein a law that has been provided sufficient opportunity to be openly debated and one that is not rushed through the House by the majority can be said to adhere to the principles of legislative due process. 

This concept may be better understood in light of the theory of ‘legislative dysfunction’ by Professor Rosalind Dixon which critiques the practice of ‘railroading’ bills through the parliament without adequate deliberation, transparency or participation. A prominent example of such dysfunction is the use of a voice-vote where a law is deemed to be passed merely on the audible volume of ‘ayes’ & ‘noes’, without a clear, recorded majority. The controversial agricultural reform laws passed in September 2020 serve as a good example of this practice.

The Israeli Supreme Court’s decision in Quantinsky v Knesset is a contemporary display of the same, where it invalidated a tax law which was rushed through the House by the majority at midnight, not giving the members enough time to properly examine and debate upon the bill. 

The Israeli Supreme Court justified this act of ‘Constitutional Paternalism’ by relying upon the doctrine of ‘misuse of constituent power’, which is analogous to India’s Basic Structure Doctrine. The Court acted as a guardian of the Knesset against executive encroachment, holding that the legislative process is subject to certain unwritten fundamental democratic principles, among which the principle of participation and deliberation is also present.

However, the Court while acknowledging the dangers of legitimising such an intervention, reasoned that judicial review of the legislative process should only be invoked if the process is tainted by a defect that goes to the ‘heart of the process’. Such defects would, inter alia, include the violation of the ‘Principle of Participation’.

This principle must be examined on two grounds: first, whether the Knesset members were denied any practical possibility of knowing about what they were voting on; and second, whether they were denied any practical possibility of formulating their position with regards to any draft law. Further, members must be able to adopt a substantive position and not a mere passive one, which would require them to engage in a cognitive process in the course of the  formulation of an informed decision. Only then can it be said that the members were granted an opportunity to participate in a real and active sense.

Importantly, mere abandonment of parliamentary debates would not serve as a valid ground for judicial review. Further guidance may be taken from Justice Mazuz’s minority opinion, where he articulated that the court ought not review the quality of the debate, instead focus on the opportunity to debate. He further proposed the mechanism of ‘delayed voidance’ to be employed in such cases, where the law would remain in force till a specific time frame, post which it would have to be re-enacted by the Knesset from the stage at which the alleged legislative defect occurred. 

Importing this concept back to India, the primary aim of the courts would be to secure the fundamental principles of a deliberative democracy and preserving the democratic ‘rules of the game’. Since this exercise could potentially invite widespread challenges to all enacted legislation, guidance may be taken from Justice Mazuz’s non-interventionist stance, where the threshold for deciding challenges to a legislation would be the opportunity and not the quality of debate. Mass suspensions would fall squarely within this categorization, where a legislator’s very opportunity to participate in a debate is taken away. However, this is not be to applied to lawful suspensions, rather in cases where executive obstruction reaches a level of malfunction to justify the use of judicial review.

VI. Conclusion

The Confidence placed upon the impartiality of the Speaker by the drafters of our Constitution is both utopic and idealistic to say the least. While suspensions are a tool for maintaining order and discipline within the House, their use as a colourable device to control & capture the House undermines the principles of Constitutionalism.

Lastly, while this contribution reads into the idea of Legislative due process in the specific context of suspensions, the concept must not be pigeon-holed and should be invoked wherever the majority employs its Constitutional hardball tactics to suppress meaningful deliberation within the House. While a strict Constitutional lLegalist might be reluctant to endorse such judicial adventurism, a Constitutional realist must recognise the dangers posed to the fundamental principles of a representative democracy by such executive encroachment.

**Ansh Arora is a second-year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at National Law University, Jodhpur, with a keen interest in Constitutional Law and the field of Law and Public Policy. He gratefully acknowledges the early contributions of Ashwath Ram, a fellow second-year student at NLU Jodhpur, and the much valuable insights and guidance provided by Ms. Sayantani Bagchi, Assistant Professor at NLU Jodhpur.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.