Speaker has final say on Leader of Opposition

Hours after Congress chief Sonia Gandhi met President Pranab Mukherjee over the issue of Leader of Opposition (LOP) for her party, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday said that the Speaker's decision is final. Citing past instances and noting that the Parliament has followed the norm of 10 per cent total strength, Prasad said: "Who will become the leader of Opposition is a call taken by the Speaker. The jurisdiction is of the Speaker alone. The Indian Parliament has followed the convention that the party should have 10 per cent of the total strength of the house."

In the 2014 general election, the Congress secured just 44 Parliamentary seats, much below the 10 per cent of the total strength in the Parliament.

Speaking over various legal issues pertaining to his ministry, Prasad said his government's priority is to fill 200 vacancies for the post of high court judges and 4,000 for judicial officers in trial courts across the country.

Defending the government's stance over the appointment of senior lawyer Gopal Subramanium as a Supreme Court judge, he said the government has its right to be consulted for appointing judges and also to reconsider the collegium's proposal.