NEW DELHI, 9 May — Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Minister Manohar Joshi is set to become the next speaker of the Lok Sabha, lower house of India’s Parliament, following a decision taken by the ruling coalition here yesterday.
The 64-year-old Joshi, a senior leader of the Shiv Sena, a key ally in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s alliance, was preferred over two other Cabinet ministers who were said to be in the race.
With Vajpayee’s coalition in a majority in the Lok Sabha, Joshi’s election tomorrow is expected to be a mere formality.
The position has been vacant since G.M.C. Balayogi, who had been speaker since 1998, died in a helicopter crash in Andhra Pradesh March 5.
It was left to the BJP to decide on a replacement after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, who heads the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to which Balayogi belonged, declined to field a candidate from his party.
Two other names that strongly did the rounds were those of Tourism Minister Jagmohan and Petroleum and Gas Minister Ram Naik, both of the BJP.
Jagmohan’s candidature ran into problems within the BJP while Naik was not keen on being the Lok Sabha speaker. In the end, however, the decision seems to have been in favor of continuing with the coalition’s tradition of giving the post to an ally.
Joshi is one of the 13 MPs belonging to the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, where he was chief minister 1994-99 heading a BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government.
