?Speaker?s presence at SP rally amazing?

THE PRESENCE of Vidhan Sabha Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey on the dais and his speech at the Samajwadi Party conference here on Saturday has led to a controversy.

THE PRESENCE of Vidhan Sabha Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey on the dais and his speech at the Samajwadi Party conference here on Saturday has led to a controversy.

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Former Speaker and state president of the BJP, Keshari Nath Tripathi said he did not remember any Speaker, who had ever attended such a function organised by a political party. Criticism of the Governor, the constitutional head of a State, by the Speaker was amazing and a new phenomenon in today’s politics, he said.

Though there was no rule or law that prevented a Speaker from participating in the activities of the political party he belonged to, Tripathi added, it was a question of ‘political ethics and personal morality’, as a Speaker should not only be unbiased, doing justice to all political parties and their leaders, his behaviour and conduct should reflect the same.

Tripathi further said that after taking over as Speaker, he had stopped attending meetings of the BJP and had even resigned from the national and state executives of the party on the advice of Lal Krishna Advani.

Former UP Vidhan Sabha secretary, Bhal Chandra Shukla said that he never came across a Speaker during his long tenure in the office who had attended a programme organised by a political party.

In Britain, Speaker resigns from his parent political party soon after taking over the charge and contests the election in which no political party fields candidate against him, Shukla said, adding that here even the Speaker knew that he would be on the mercy of his party president to get a ticket to contest the next election and that was the reason why he was ready to oblige his political bosses.