The Tamil Nadu Assembly is known for the stable tenures of Speakers. Ordinarily, the incumbents do not get disturbed. Those who gave up the post were far and few. Among those were J. Sivashanmugam Pillai (1901-75), Tamil Nadu’s first Speaker belonging to the Scheduled Castes, who quit in August 1955 on his appointment as a Member of the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC); Si. Pa. Aditanar (1907-81), who resigned in August 1968 and became Cooperation Minister six months later; K. Kalimuthu (1942-2006) in 2006; and D. Jayakumar (1960-) in 2012.
But, in the history of the State Legislature, only once was its presiding officer getting removed through a motion. That presiding officer was K. A. Mathialagan, and he was thus removed in December1972, when the DMK was in power.
After this incident, there were five other occasions wherein notice for the removal of the Speaker was given by the Opposition. On all the occasions (April 1993 and 1995, August 2006, May 2007, and March 2017), the motions were declared either lost or dropped.
