Ex-Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar elected speaker of MP assembly

BHOPAL: Senior BJP leader and former Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar was on Wednesday unanimously elected as the speaker of the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly.

The first session of the newly-elected assembly began on Monday.

Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Wednesday moved a proposal for the election of 66-year-old Tomar as the speaker which was seconded by leader of opposition Umang Singhar.

Former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan also moved a proposal for the election of Tomar as the speaker which was seconded by ex-Union minister Prahlad Patel, who recently won from Narsinghpur assembly seat in the state.

Five more proposals, including by opposition Congress MLAs Ajay Singh, Jaivardhan Singh and Rajendra Kumar Singh, were also moved in favour of Tomar.

After the voice vote, pro-tem speaker Gopal Bhargava declared Tomar as elected unanimously to the speaker's post.

Tomar filed his nomination for the speaker's post on Monday with the support of the opposition Congress.

Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Wednesday congratulated Tomar and also thanked the opposition for unanimously electing the speaker.

Yadav said Tomar has been equally popular among the ruling and opposition leaders.

LoP Singhar, ex-CM Chouhan and other leaders also congratulated Tomar.

Tomar, who got his first electoral victory as a corporator in Gwalior in 1983, was elected from Dimani assembly seat of Morena district in the recently concluded state elections.

He held different posts, including state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and later state chief of the BJP.

In 1998, Tomar entered the state assembly after winning from Gwalior seat.

Tomar was again elected from the same seat in 2003. He then became a cabinet minister in the BJP-led state government.

For a brief period in 2009, Tomar was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state. Later in the same year, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Morena seat.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Tomar was elected on the BJP ticket from Gwalior parliamentary seat and became Union cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi government.

Tomar's seat was changed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when he successfully contested from Morena and retained ministerial berth at the Centre. On December 3, the ruling BJP recorded a thumping victory in Madhya Pradesh by winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly. The Congress, which had bagged 114 seats in 2018, won just 66 segments, while Bharat Adivasi Party candidate Kamleshwar Dodiyar pocketed the Sailana constituency.