Veteran leader Tapas Roy to take oath as pro-tem Speaker of Bengal Assembly today
Kolkata: Veteran leader and six-time legislator Tapas Roy will take oath as the pro-tem Speaker in the West Bengal Assembly on Tuesday.
Governor R.N. Ravi will be administering the oath of office to Roy as the pro-tem Speaker.
As the pro-tem Speaker, Roy will administer the oath ceremony of the 293 newly elected legislators in the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly polls on May 13 and May 14.
Although the total number of Assembly constituencies is 294, currently there are 293 legislators, as the Election Commission of India (ECI) decided to conduct repolling for the entire Falta Assembly constituency in South 24 Parganas district following massive electoral malpractices on April 29.
The repolling for Falta will be conducted on May 21, and the results will be declared on May 24.
A pro-tem Speaker is a temporary presiding officer appointed for a limited period to conduct the business of a newly elected Lok Sabha or State Assembly before a regular Speaker is elected. They are usually the most senior members of the House and oversee the oath-taking for new members.
Roy is the seniormost legislator among the 207 existing MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which formed its first government in West Bengal since Independence after the Assembly polls this time.
Insiders from the state unit of the BJP said that Roy is also likely to become the BJP’s Speaker of the House.
Roy’s journey as an elected legislator began in 1996, when he was first elected as a Congress MLA from the pre-delimitation Assembly constituency of Vidyasagar. Thereafter, he was elected again as a legislator in 2001 from another pre-delimitation Assembly constituency of Bara-Bazar in South Kolkata, but that time as a Trinamool Congress candidate.
In 2011, which marked the end of the 34-year Left Front regime in the state and the beginning of the 15-year-long Trinamool Congress rule with Mamata Banerjee as the Chief Minister, Roy was elected again on a Trinamool ticket from the Baranagar Assembly constituency in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.
He got re-elected from Baranagar in 2016 and 2021. On March 4, 2024, just before the last Lok Sabha polls, he quit Trinamool Congress, resigned as a legislator and joined the BJP.
He was nominated as a BJP candidate from Kolkata (Uttar) Lok Sabha constituency in 2024, but was defeated by the four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member, Sudip Bandopadhyay.
Finally, this year, he contested as a BJP candidate from Maniktala Assembly constituency in North Kolkata and was elected, defeating Trinamool Congress’ Shreya Pande by over 1,25,000 votes.