Majority of Leaders of Opposition in LS have been 60 years of age or younger

Rahul Gandhi became the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha on June 25. Winning 99 seats, the party has regained the seat of the LoP after a gap of 10 years. 

Analysis of LoP data from 1952 shows that the Gandhi family dominates the young LoP brigade. Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi make up the top three out of the four youngest LoPs across the 18 Lok Sabha sessions. 

However, Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi were younger than him when they took up the position. Rajiv Gandhi was just 45 and the youngest politician to become LoP in the 10th LS in 1989. Sonia, on the other hand, was 53 when she became LoP in the 13th LS in 1999. 

Further, a majority of the LoPs in Lok Sabha so far, are either 60 years or below. Seven of them including the very first LoP Ram Subhag Singh and the newly elected Rahul Gandhi fall in the age group of 45-60 years.

In contrast, Ganga Devi, 80, the Congress MP from UP’s Mohanlalganj constituency was the oldest LoP in the lower house’s history. She is also the LoP serving the shortest tenure of 15 days.

LoP is defined as the leader of the single largest Opposition party in the Parliament. They are often termed the shadow prime ministers or alternative prime ministers as if the ruling government topples, their team has to take over.

Out of shadows

Another peculiarity of the 18th LS is that it gets a LoP after ten years. But this is not the first time the LoP’s chair has remained vacant. There have been around eight sessions where there were no LoPs. 

The Lok Sabha did not officially recognise a LoP until 1969. Ram Subhag Singh became the first LoP in December 1969. In 1977, the title was officially recognised with the introduction of the Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act. The Act defines LoP as the leader of the Opposition party having the greatest numerical strength and recognised as such by the Speaker.

GV Mavlankar, the first LS Speaker formulated a rule that the single largest Opposition party must have at least 10 per cent (minimum 54 seats) of the total strength of the house to designate a LoP. Traditionally, this has been the basis of LoP elections, though the 1977 Act does not mandate this requirement.

In the 5th LS session from 1970-77, during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, there was no LoP as no party had the required strength. The same was repeated in the 7th and 8th LS. During the NDA rule in 2014 and 2019, the Congress won only 44 and 52 seats respectively, falling short of the required number.

However, former Secretary General of the Lok Sabha, PDT Chary, says, “The 10 per cent rule is irrelevant and the numerically largest party should be given the LoP... ...The biggest challenge for the newly elected LoP is to keep up their unity. So many smaller parties are there in the Opposition. If they stand united, they have much to gain,” added Chary.

Yashwantrao Chavan, AB Vajpayee and LK Advani are three leaders who held the LoP post more than once. LK Advani has served the post the longest- four times totalling over eight years.