The Lok Sabha Has 543 Elected Seats and a Five-Year Term, and Its Speaker, Chosen by the Members, Presides, Keeps Order and Certifies Money Bills

The Lok Sabha, the House of the People, has 543 elected members, each representing one constituency, and under Article 75(3) the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to it. Members serve for five years from the House’s first meeting unless it is dissolved earlier, and they choose a Speaker who runs the House under rules the House made for itself.

The 18th Lok Sabha came out of the 2024 general election, in which the Election Commission records 64.64 crore votes cast from 97.97 crore registered electors. The Commission’s own release calls it the world’s largest election. The upper House has its own guide.

543 seats, and how they are shared

Up to 530 members chosen by direct election from constituencies in the States, and up to 20 to represent the Union territories, make up the House under Article 81(1), a ceiling of 550. A Government of India table of seats, dated March 2009, says the country is divided into 543 constituencies, each electing one member. Uttar Pradesh gets 80 seats in that table, and Sikkim, Mizoram and Nagaland get one each.

Of the 543 seats, 84 are reserved for Scheduled Castes and 47 for Scheduled Tribes, the groups the Constitution lists for special protection, under the Delimitation Commission’s 2008 order, and 412 are general. As the 104th Amendment Act of 2019 left it, Article 334 lets that reservation run for eighty years from the Constitution’s start on 26 January 1950, so it lapses in January 2030 unless Parliament extends it. The same article allowed seventy years for nominating up to two Anglo-Indian members under Article 331, a period that ran out in January 2020.

How many seats each State gets is still worked out from the 1971 census. The proviso to Article 81(3) tells the reader to take “population” as the 1971 census when seats are allotted among States, and the third proviso to Article 82 says no readjustment is needed until figures from the first census taken after 2026 are published. The freeze entered the Constitution with the 42nd Amendment in 1977, and the 84th Amendment, in force from 21 February 2002, moved its end date to 2026. The 131st Amendment Bill, which would have raised the ceiling to 850 and which PRS lists as negatived in the Lok Sabha on 17 April 2026, is covered in our guide to how the Constitution is amended.

A member must be a citizen at least 25 years old (Article 84), and voters must be 18 or older (Article 326). Women number 74 in the 18th Lok Sabha, 14 percent of the House and down from 78 in 2019, and PRS counts members from 41 parties.

How a Lok Sabha starts and ends, with 2024 as the example

Five years “from the date appointed for its first meeting” is the House’s term under Article 83(2), and the end of that period operates as a dissolution. The only way to a longer term is the proviso to the clause: while a Proclamation of Emergency is in force, Parliament may extend the term by law, one year at a time and never beyond six months after the Proclamation ends. When such a Proclamation can be issued is covered in our piece on the emergency provisions. The President may also dissolve the House early under Article 85(2)(b).

Results for all 543 constituencies were declared on 4 June 2024, PRS says, and Surat in Gujarat was uncontested, the Election Commission records. The Cabinet advised the President on 5 June to dissolve the 17th Lok Sabha, and the President signed the order under Article 85(2)(b) the same day. On 6 June the Chief Election Commissioner and the two Election Commissioners gave the President a copy of the notification under Section 73 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which names the members elected.

The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha began on 24 June 2024. The President appointed a pro tem Speaker under Article 95(1) to perform the Speaker’s duties until the House elected one, and the first two sittings were given entirely to the oath or affirmation that members make under Article 99. Five years from 24 June 2024 runs to June 2029.

How the Speaker is chosen and removed

Under Article 93 the House must, “as soon as may be”, choose two of its members to be Speaker and Deputy Speaker. The method is in Rule 7 of the Lok Sabha’s rules. The President fixes the date. Until noon on the day before, any member may give written notice of a motion naming another member, with a second and a statement that the person named is willing to serve, and nobody may propose or second their own name. The motions are put one by one in the order they were moved and decided by division, a recorded vote, if necessary. Once one is carried, the later ones are not put.

The Tribune reports that this happened in 1952, when Jawaharlal Nehru proposed G. V. Mavalankar and the motion for the opposition candidate Shankar Shantaram More never reached a vote. The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs records that the 2024 election was held on 26 June and the sitting Speaker was elected by voice vote. That made it the sixth time a Speaker had been re-elected for a second term, PRS notes, the last being in 1999.

Exit is covered by Article 94. The Speaker vacates the office on ceasing to be a member of the House, may resign in writing to the Deputy Speaker, and may be removed by a resolution passed by a majority of all the members then in the House, after at least 14 days’ notice. After a dissolution the Speaker stays in office until just before the new House first meets. While a removal resolution is being considered the Speaker, though present, does not preside, may speak and take part, and may vote only in the first instance, with no casting vote (Article 96).

What the Speaker decides, and where the courts step in

Each House makes its own rules under Article 118. The Lok Sabha’s Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business began as the Constituent Assembly (Legislative) rules, adapted and published on 17 April 1952, and the 17th edition dates from May 2024. The Speaker fixes the days the House sits (Rule 13), and sittings ordinarily run from 11.00 to 18.00 hours unless the Speaker directs otherwise (Rule 12). A point of order is settled by the Speaker alone, whose decision Rule 376(3) makes final. The Speaker does not vote in the first instance and has only a casting vote in a tie (Article 100(1)).

Discipline is in Rules 374 and 374A. Rule 374 lets the Speaker name a member who persistently and wilfully obstructs business, and the House then votes on suspension for up to the rest of the session. Added in December 2001 during the 13th Lok Sabha, Rule 374A suspends a member automatically, once named for coming into the well of the House or obstructing by shouting slogans, for five consecutive sittings or the remainder of the session, whichever is less. Across both Houses, PRS counted 206 suspensions in the 17th Lok Sabha, and 146 MPs were suspended in the Winter Session of 2023.

Whether a Bill is a Money Bill is for the Speaker to decide, and the decision is final (Article 110(3)); the Speaker’s certificate must be endorsed on it (Article 110(4)). A Money Bill cannot be introduced in the Rajya Sabha, which has 14 days to recommend changes that the Lok Sabha may accept or reject (Article 109); the Rajya Sabha guide linked earlier covers the dispute over what counts.

Courts are kept out of much of this by Article 122, which says proceedings in Parliament cannot be questioned for an alleged irregularity of procedure, and that no officer or member with powers to regulate procedure or keep order is subject to a court’s jurisdiction for using them.

The Speaker’s role in defection cases has been tested in court. Under paragraph 6 of the Tenth Schedule, added by the 52nd Amendment in 1985, any question about disqualification for defection goes to the Speaker, whose decision the text calls final. In Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu, decided on 18 February 1992, a five-judge Bench held by three to two that paragraph 7, which barred the courts entirely, needed ratification by half the State legislatures, and the majority removed that paragraph alone. The majority also held that a Speaker deciding under the Schedule acts as a tribunal whose decision courts can review for violation of constitutional mandates, mala fides, breach of natural justice and perversity, but ordinarily not before the decision is made.

A three-judge Bench said in Keisham Meghachandra Singh, on 21 January 2020, that a Speaker should ordinarily decide such petitions within three months. The Bench also suggested that Parliament consider a permanent tribunal headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or a retired High Court Chief Justice in the Speaker’s place, reasoning, in LiveLaw’s account, that a Speaker who belongs to a party may not act impartially. The Government’s edition of the Constitution still names the Speaker in paragraph 6.

The Deputy Speaker’s chair has been empty since 2019

Neither Article 93 nor Rule 8 sets a deadline for choosing a Deputy Speaker, and Rule 8 lets the Speaker fix the date. The Deputy Speaker performs the Speaker’s duties while that office is vacant and acts when the Speaker is absent from a sitting (Article 95). When both are away, one of a panel of up to ten Chairpersons whom the Speaker nominates under Rule 9 presides.

PRS’s note of 13 August 2026 says the Lok Sabha has gone without a Deputy Speaker for more than seven years. The 17th Lok Sabha, which first sat in June 2019, ran its whole term without one, the first time a House had done so. The 18th had not elected one two years into its term. The Supreme Court issued notice to the Union Government on the delay in February 2023, PRS adds, and the case is pending.

The Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition

The Rules define the Leader of the House as the Prime Minister if a member of the Lok Sabha, or otherwise a Minister who is a member and is nominated by the Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition is defined by statute. Section 2 of the Salary and Allowances of Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Act, 1977 describes the post as held by the leader in the House of the party in opposition to the Government with the greatest numerical strength, recognised by the Speaker. If two or more opposition parties have equal strength, the Speaker recognises one leader “having regard to the status of the parties”.

The Rules and the Speaker’s Directions do not use the word opposition. Directions 120 and 121 say the Speaker may recognise an association of members as a Parliamentary Party, and one condition is a strength equal to the quorum, “one-tenth of the total number of members of the House”, besides an announced programme and an organisation inside and outside the House. The Tribune reported in June 2024 that the Lok Sabha had gone ten years without a Leader of the Opposition because the largest opposition party held 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in 2019, short of the 10 percent needed to claim the post. A legal commentary published on 18 May 2014 read the law differently, arguing that the 1977 Act sets no threshold and that the Speaker can recognise the leader of the largest opposition party.

A Lok Sabha Secretariat notification of 26 June 2024 recognised a Leader of the Opposition under Section 2 of the Act, with effect from 9 June, The Tribune reports. PRS lists the Indian National Congress, the second-largest party, with 99 seats, and 10 percent of 543 is about 55.

How often it sits, and how it has functioned since 2024

The only limit in Article 85(1) is that six months must not pass between the last sitting of one session and the first of the next, so the Constitution sets no minimum number of sitting days. Our guide to how Parliament’s sessions and committees work covers the calendar. The 17th Lok Sabha held 274 sittings, the fewest of any full-term House, PRS counts, an average of 55 days a year against 135 in the first Lok Sabha.

PRS reports that the Lok Sabha ran for 123 percent of its scheduled time in the first two sessions of the 18th Lok Sabha, from June to August 2024. The Monsoon Session of 2026 met for 19 days from 20 July to 13 August, and the Lok Sabha ran for 15 percent of its scheduled time, with Question Hour at 1 percent. It passed 11 Bills in that session, nine of them with no member other than the Minister speaking. Committees have received 21 percent of Bills in the 18th Lok Sabha, against 16 percent in the 17th and 28 percent in the 16th, PRS reports.