Tribute to Speaker Rabi Ray

          Two years back on 6th March 2017,  Shri Rabi Ray who was a freedom fighter, a socialist, a long standing legislator, union minister, Speaker of ninth Lok Sabha and above all an outstanding leader of our public life breathed his last  leaving behind a glorious legacy of service, honesty,  integrity and intellectual quest. A follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Ram Manohar Lohia he remained wedded to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution and fiercely defended parliamentary democracy anchored on secularism and civilizational values of embracing the other and toleration.   

          In the annals of our parliamentary democracy the rich legacy associated with the office of the Speaker of Lok Sabha commenced with Shri Vittalbhai Patel, elder brother of legendary Sardar Patel, assuming  the office of the President of the Central Legislative Assembly(what is now called as Speaker was called as President then)  in 1925 and establishing the exemplary tradition of neutrality and impartiality of the presiding officer. He functioned with so much authority marked by his fierce sense of independence that every action of his was hailed and valued for its fairness and objectivity. Even the British Government hailed his rulings and had no courage to question them. It was said that there was Patel Raj in Delhi when Vittalbhai Patel was the President of the Central Legislative Assembly.

          Late Shri  Rabi Ray's tenure as the Speaker of ninth Lok Sabha which lasted for over two years from his assumption of office in December 1989 can be said to have the attributes of Shri Vittalbhai Patel's tenure as the President of the Central Legislative Assembly.  Shri Ray's personality marked by exacting standards of honesty, integrity and simplicity and his role in insulating the office of the Speaker from the influences of the Government and his method of taking independent decisions based on letter and spirit of law and jurisprudence had close similarities with that of Shri Vittalbhai's tenure.  

          On getting unanimously elected as the Speaker and  assuming the that august office when Rabi Ray came to occupy the office car to go home he found a Mercedes car waiting for him near a parliament gate. He immediately declined to use it and wanted a simple ambassador car. When he was told that mercedes car was the official car of the Speaker he instructed to immediately replace it with an ambassador car. Everyone was   stunned by that decision of the newly elected  Speaker.  It  brought out his simplicity  and plain living even while occupying the august  office of the presiding officer of the Lok Sabha.

          Among the numerous path breaking decisions he took as the Speaker of the ninth Lok Sabha a few needs to be recalled to underline  their enduring and contemporary significance. His  most momentous decision was the setting up of the subject committees of Parliament which are now known as Department related Parliamentary Standing Committees the reports of which are now widely quoted in Parliament, media, academia and numerous Government departments. The day he assumed office as the Speaker of Lok Sabha he addressed the press and announced that his priority was to fine tune the functioning of the Parliament through the mechanism of subject committees. If any worthwhile work of the Parliament is done in any realm now it is the realm of these Department related Parliamentary Standing Committees which bring out the bipartisan functioning of the apex representative institution of our democracy and which closely scrutinize the functioning of the executive. These Committees were established by following the Subject Committees of the British Parliament which when set up in 1979 were hailed as the parliamentary innovations of the twentieth century. In setting up such Committees Shri Ray was heralding a new era for the Indian Parliament in making the executive more accountable to the Parliament. It is tragic that now the present dispensation is not using such Committees to scrutinize legislations and rather willfully not referring bills to such Committees for examination and assessment. It is a negation of the principle of accountability which remained central to Shri Ray's decision to establish such Committees.

          He created history when for the first time after the setting up of the Republic of India he admitted an impeachment motion against a sitting judge of the higher judiciary who indulged in  corruption and unethical activities.  That motion was admitted on the last day of the ninth Lok Sabha and some people challenged it in the Supreme Court by arguing that the motion lapsed with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha. But the Supreme Court upheld the motion of impeachment admitted by the Speaker who  stood vindicated for taking a lawful decision. That decision to admit impeachment motion flowed from the vision of Shri Ray to fight against corruption in all spheres of public life. Eventually the motion fell when Congress party abstained from voting when the it  was put to vote in tenth Lok Sabha. The precedent created by Shri Ray in admitting the impeachment motion was cited in the context of the decision of the present Chairman, Rajya Sabha, who did not admit the impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India even as requisite number of members signed the motion.

              A Presiding Officer is the repository of the dignity and authority of the House.  Shri Rabi Ray as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha amply demonstrated his power and authority to remain impartial and give appropriate ruling which commanded the respect from leaders of all political parties.  In this context, one may recall his historic ruling which he gave in January 1991 when some Members of the Janata Dal caused the split in the original party and some others defied party whip while voting in the House and attracting provisions of the anti defection law.    In the annals of parliamentary democracy his ruling is cited for his neutrality and objectivity in understanding a complex situation arising out of split and defiance of whip.  Shri Rabi Rai declared 25 Members of the Janata Dal, who claimed to have split from the party  as unattached.  And  later  when 30 other Members of the same party joined them  and claimed that they had also  split from the party, Shri Ray  issued show cause notice to them for  explaining as to how they would not be subjected to disqualification under the Anti-Defection Law. He also issued show cause notice to seven other Members who had violated whip while voting in the Lok Sabha in favour of Chandra Shekhar Government.  Some affected Members  filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court praying for stay of Speaker's action.  When the Delhi High Court issued notice to Speaker Shri Rai, he refused to submit himself to the jurisdiction of the High Court and declined to accept the notice on the ground that he as the Speaker represented the supremacy of the Parliament on those matters and no other authority could examine the decision of the Speaker.  However, the High Court passed an order without staying the action of the Speaker and expressed hope that the Speaker would not take any adverse action pending disposal of the writ petition. The then Law Minister Shri Subramaniam Swamy while meeting Shri Rabi Ray in Speaker's Chamber asked him to withhold his ruling on disqualification of Members who were issued show cause notice by him. He threatened to arrest Shri Ray in event of his action to disqualify the Members.  President R. Venkatraman in his memoirs "My Presidential Years" wrote  that many Members of the Lok Sabha demanded on the floor of the House for the resignation of Shri Swamy for having threatened the Speaker of Lok Sabha to arrest him.  Shri Rabi Ray showed rare magnanimity when he urged the House not to blow up the incident and requested everybody to forget it.  However, the Members did not relent and when Shri Swamy wanted to speak and clarify he was shouted down.  Shri Swamy later informed President Venkatraman that he only told the Speaker that any of his decision to disqualify the Members when the matter was pending in the  High Court would amount to contempt of the court and Speaker would be liable to be arrested.  After hearing such an account from Shri Subramaniam Swamy President Venkatraman noted that pendency of a matter before the court did not mean that the court had given a stay on it and Shri Swamy's understanding that the Speaker could be guilty of contempt of court was untenable.  Then President Venkatraman critically reflected on Law Minister Shri Subramaniam Swamy and wrote in his memoir "It is a pity that a country which produced legal luminaries like Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Ambedkar, Katju and Alladin should have a Law Minister without qualifications in law". 

Later when the Delhi High Court formally stayed the action of the Speaker to proceed against 25 Members on the basis of the Anti-Defection Law the entire Lok Sabha protested against the order of the High Court against the Speaker who informed the House that he was not submitting himself to the jurisdiction of the High Court and proceeding to examine the petitions for disqualification.  Shri Rajiv Gandhi  took a stand that he and his party would stand by Speaker's decision in matters relating to defection and on the supremacy of Parliament.  When the entire House (Lok Sabha) stood in favour of Speaker the Delhi High Court withdrew its stay order against the Speaker and categorically accepted the final authority of the Speaker on such matters.  Later Speaker Shri Rabi Ray gave a ruling recognizing the Members as a separate formation and disqualified those Members who violated whip to vote in favour of Chandrasekhar Government.  Such a ruling was hailed by all concerned and President Venkatraman described it as a balanced ruling.  The above narrative clearly brought out the courage of conviction of Shri Rabi Ray as Speaker of Lok Sabha not to submit himself to the jurisdiction of any other authority on matters concerning Parliament.  It was a rare example of a Presiding Officer who zealously safeguarded the authority of Parliament and his balanced and legally correct stand commanded respect even from judiciary.  It is worthwhile to note that when the successor of Shri Rabi Ray gave a ruling concerning split of a political party there emerged a controversy and all concerned referred to Shri Rabi Ray's ruling on abovementioned similar matter to signify the importance and impartiality of the office of the Speaker.

At a time when the present Speaker of  the Lok Sabha made a blatant political statement on the issue of the induction of Priyanka Gandhi to Congress and at a time when so many decisions of the Speaker on the issue of money bill is challenged in the courts of  law it is worthwhile to gratefully  recall the legacy of late Shri Ray and salvage our Parliament and parliamentary democracy.

Shri Sahu served as OSD and Press Secretary to President of India late Shri K R Narayanan and had a tenure as Director in PMO and Joint Secretary in Rajya Sabha Secretariat.