New Delhi, May 8 :    New Delhi, May 8:  Shiv Sena's Manohar Joshi has emerged as the 'consensus' choice for the Lok Sabha Speaker's post, prompting the party, considered by many as a political pariah, to tom-tom the honour as its finest achievement. Government sources claimed that the Opposition, which could not have won in the event of an election, said it had no problems with Joshi. But several Opposition leaders voiced concern at the prospect of having a Sena MP presiding over the House at a time when the country is going through a communal crisis. Joshi's nomination was proposed by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and seconded by home minister L.K. Advani after Chandrababu Naidu refused to nominate a Telugu Desam candidate. 'This is the greatest honour our party could have received,' a delighted Sena MP said. If the Sena has emerged as the surprise winner, the biggest loser is the Desam. Naidu's party, which had declined the post to register its protest against the continuation of Narendra Modi in Gujarat, suffered the ignominy of seconding a Sena member's nomination. Outwardly, the gesture conveyed a sense of renewed solidarity within the NDA after the censure motion stand-off. But, in the process, the Desam unwittingly became party to an exercise that gifts more legitimacy to a political group with a divisive ideology. Congress sources said deputy leader of the parliamentary party Shivraj Patil managed to convince Sonia Gandhi, saying Joshi was 'proper' and need not necessarily be partisan. However, Congress spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy could not help saying what he felt: 'We had no voice in their choice.' CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee said 'there was no unanimity, no consensus'. But he promised cooperation with a word of advice for Joshi: 'Sitting in the Chair, you will have to forget you are a Sainik first, unlike the Prime Minister who calls himself a pracharak first'. Joshi filed his nomination at 6 pm on his return from Mumbai, where he met his party chief Bal Thackeray. The election will take place on May 10. The Speaker-in-waiting told reporters that Thackeray gave his blessings and asked him to go and do justice to his post. Although BJP sources had initially insisted that the party would have its own candidate and not from an ally, they admitted that Thackeray's pressure tilted the balance in Joshi's favour. The Sena chief had been upset for a long time at the 'under-representation' of his members in the Union Cabinet despite being the second largest NDA constituent after the Desam.