A constitutional office may be weakened not by abolition, but by nonappointment. Examine with reference to the office of the Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" — the liberal democratic principle that minority voice must be institutionally protected even by those who oppose it. The Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha was designed to be precisely that institutional protection.

The constitutional and conventional design — why the office exists

• Art. 93 a mandatory constitutional direction: The phrase "shall choose" in Article 93 is imperative, not enabling as it creates a constitutional obligation, not a discretion.
• Art. 95(1): The Deputy Speaker presides when the Speaker is absent, chairs committees, and crucially, under Article 95(1), exercises all the Speaker's powers during such absence. The office is not ornamental; it is the constitutional backup of Parliament's presiding function.
• Convention: allocated the Deputy Speakership to the principal Opposition party This convention operationalised the constitutional design's separation of the presiding function from the ruling party's political interests, a check within the House analogous to the Speaker's own constitutional independence. This design logic makes the vacancy's consequences more than procedural. Yet the 17th Lok Sabha (2019–2024) completed its full five-year term without electing a Deputy Speaker, the first full-term Parliament in independent India's history to do so. No amendment was needed to hollow out the office; non-appointment achieved what abolition could not, and did so without constitutional visibility.

The consequences of non-appointment:

• The constitutional vacuum ( no judicial remedy) : The SC in Sanjay Singh v. Rajya Sabha (2019) confirmed that parliamentary proceedings are protected from judicial review under Articles 105 and 122.
  • The Deputy Speaker's non-election is an internal parliamentary matter no court can direct the House to fill the post. The constitutional obligation of Article 93 is thus judicially unenforceable, making it entirely dependent on political will, the precise condition in which constitutional conventions are most vulnerable to erosion.
• Functional impairment: The Deputy Speaker chairs the most consequential parliamentary committees including the Business Advisory Committee during the Speaker's absence;
  • Under Article 95, the Deputy Speaker is the constitutionally preferred authority to act as Speaker during the Speaker’s absence or vacancy.
  • The Deputy Speaker also has institutional roles such as chairing the Committee on Private Members’ Bills and Resolutions, while the Panel of Chairpersons acts only as a substitute arrangement.
  • The precedent damage: The political normalisation of this vacancy creates a template: future governments may similarly defer inconvenient constitutional appointments indefinitely, since Article 93's "as soon as may be" has been demonstrated to carry no enforceable deadline.
• Anti-defection law and the Speaker's partisanship problem:
• PRS Legislative Research documented that the 17th Lok Sabha holds the record for the fewest sittings among full-term Lok Sabhas (274 total) and the lowest committee referral rate (16%) — a Parliament already operating below its constitutional design capacity, now with its presiding backup position vacant.

The Deputy Speaker's constitutional independence from the ruling party (through the Opposition convention) was designed to provide a counterweight to the Speaker's potential partisanship — a concern that has intensified since the Tenth Schedule vested disqualification powers in the Speaker.

• Comparative constitutional design: The UK House of Commons has three Deputy Speakers (First Deputy Chairman, Second Deputy Chairman, and Panel Chairman) all elected by the House, conventionally from parties other than the Speaker's, ensuring presiding continuity and crossparty confidence in the chair. The US House has a Speaker Pro Tempore elected daily when the Speaker is absent. Way forward
• Rules of Procedure amendment: Rule 8 of the Lok Sabha Rules should be amended to mandate election of the Deputy Speaker within 30 days of the first sitting of each Lok Sabha — converting "as soon as may be" from an aspirational direction into an enforceable procedural obligation.
• Convention codification (Opposition entitlement) The convention allocating the Deputy Speakership to the principal Opposition party should be codified in the Rules of Procedure — insulating it from ruling- party discretion and giving it the force of a procedural rule rather than a political courtesy.
• No-confidence motion protection: The Rules should specify that a noconfidence motion against the Speaker must be presided over by the Deputy Speaker — a structural safeguard that requires the Deputy Speaker to exist; creating the functional compulsion that the constitutional text alone failed to create.

A constitutionally mandated presiding officer from the Opposition, protected by convention, empowered by Article 95, was Parliament's internal guarantee that the right to dissent would be procedurally defended regardless of the government's preferences.