Confidential AG opinion told Lok Sabha speaker in 2014: LoP can't be appointed on the basis of 1977 law

Sumitra Mahajan, Mukul Rohatgi

By A Representative
Information obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan banked on what has been described as “truncated” opinion of the Attorney General of India (AGI) while rejecting the claim of the Indian National Congress (INC) for Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the lower house in 2014.
Marked “confidential”, the AGI, Mukul Rohatgi, in his “opinion” to the Lok Sabha speaker on July 23, 2014, seeks to bank on the ruling of the first Lok Sabha speaker, GV Mavlankar, in order to point out how, till 1969, which included the “entire tenure of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and thereafter”, there was no LoP.
Rohatgi quotes Mavlankar’s "directions" to say that the LoP should have the strength “equal to the quorum required in for constituting a sitting of the House, which is one-tenth of the total number of the members in the Lok Sabha.”
Based on this, says Rohatgi, in the sixteenth Lok Sabha, constituted in May 2014, the largest opposition party, the INC, with just 44 members of Parliament MPs), did not have the “quorum” – 10 per cent of the Lok Sabha strength, 55 MPs.
Rohatgi argues, based on this "historical perspective", the speaker is “not obliged to recognize any members of the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha as LoP in case the said party doesn’t the strength equal to one-tenth of the quorum required for a sitting in the House.”
At the same time, the RTI reply reveals, Rohatgi sets aside the Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition Act, 1977, which defines LoP.

The Act calls LoP as “member of the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) or the House of the People (Lok Sabha), as the case may be, who is, for the time being the Leader of the House of the party in opposition to the government having the greatest numerical strength, and recognized as such by the chairman of the Council of States or the Speaker of the House of the People, as the case may be.”
Rejecting the 1977 Act’s definition, Rohatgi argues, “It is obvious from the definition of LoP… that the recognition of a member as such is not governed by this Act, but such a member has to be recognized by the speaker.”

He adds, “In other words, the issue of recognition of a member of the House as LoP is outside the purview of the Salary and Allowances of the Leader of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977.”
Based on this, Rohatgi says, the “speaker need not recognize a member of the largest opposition party in Lok Sabha as the LoP if the largest opposition party does not have strength equal to the quorum required for a sitting of the House.”
Senior RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak, who obtained the “confidential” information from the Lok Sabha secretariat, says, what Rohatgi does not take into account is, “Parliament rejected the idea of fixing a quota for claiming the LOP's chair decisively” in 1977.
Says Nayak in an email alert to Counterview, after the the Salaries and Allowances of LoPs Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha on August 6, 1977, "HV Kamath, an MP of the Janata Party and belonging to one of its constituents -- the Jan Sangh -- a previous avatar of the BJP moved amendment 15 to fix one-sixth as quota of seats in the House required for any MPs to claim the LoP's chair.”
“In support of his amendment proposal, Kamath quoted Mavalankar, where a reference was made to the 10 per cent seat requirement. This amendment was decisively rejected by Janata Party MPs who were in the majority in the then Lok Sabha”, Nayak says.
“So the numerical strength argument was weighed, measured and discarded by the Lok Sabha. To insist that 10% seat quota is essential to claim the LoP's chair amounts to blatant disregard for the express intention of Parliament”, Nayak, who is with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, argues.

Comments

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

When grief becomes grace: Kerala's quiet revolution in organ donation

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kerala is an important model for understanding India's diversity precisely because the religious and cultural plurality it has witnessed over centuries brought together traditions and good practices from across the world. Kerala had India's first communist government, was the first state where a duly elected government was dismissed, and remains the first state to achieve near-total literacy. It is also a land where Christianity and Islam took root before they spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Kerala has deep historic rationalist and secular traditions.

When a lake becomes real estate: The mismanagement of Hyderabad’s waterbodies

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava* Misunderstood, misinterpreted and misguided governance and management of urban lakes in India —illustrated here through Hyderabad —demands urgent attention from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the political establishment, the judiciary, the builder–developer lobby, and most importantly, the citizens of Hyderabad. Fundamental misconceptions about urban lakes have shaped policies and practices that systematically misuse, abuse and ultimately erase them—often in the name of urban development.

Activists warn of gendered impact of VB-GRAMG Act, seek return to MGNREGA framework

By A Representative The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA), along with the Agrarian Alliance and Workers’ Forum of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), has written to President Droupadi Murmu urging her to call upon Parliament to repeal the newly enacted Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025 (VB-GRAMG Act) and restore and strengthen the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

Stray dogs, an epsilon (ϵ) problem: Of child labour, and the art of misplaced priorities

By Bhaskaran Raman The Greek alphabet ϵ (epsilon) is used in maths and science to denote a quantity which is not zero, but extremely small *** Since the Supreme Court's interim order on the issue of stray dogs came out on 07 Nov 2025, there have been a range of opinion pieces speaking for the voiceless. Most of them take the stance that there is a "problem" with stray dogs, but that we need a humane solution. I agree with this broadly, but I think we need new terminology to talk about this.

Search This Blog