BHOPAL: A day after former chief minister Dr Raman Singh was unanimously elected as the Speaker of Chhattisgarh assembly, the Madhya Pradesh assembly on Wednesday elected former Union minister and senior BJP leader Narendra Singh Tomar as its Speaker.
The 66-year-old BJP politician from the Gwalior-Chambal region and former union agriculture minister was elected Speaker on the penultimate day of the inaugural session of the newly elected 16th Vidhan Sabha on Wednesday.
Tomar, who was among the eight BJP heavyweights (including seven MPs among them three Union ministers) who contested the recent assembly polls in their home state, won from the Dinani seat of home district Morena. Prior to it, he had won assembly polls from Gwalior seat in 1998 and 2003. Tomar had subsequently served as state BJP president in the 2008 and 2013 polls and was the convener of the ruling party’s poll management committee this time.
He has thrice been Lok Sabha member, once from Gwalior seat and twice from Morena seat and once a Rajya Sabha member too from his home state. He was cabinet minister in the previous and current central governments headed by PM Narendra Modi.
Meanwhile, the issue of country’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s portrait being replaced with Father of Indian Constitution Dr BR Ambedkar’s portrait in the main hall of the Vidhan Sabha, rocked the ongoing session on the penultimate day.
The issue was raised in the House by the Congress MLAs, including the leader of opposition (LoP) Umang Singhar, former ministers Ramniwas Rawat and Bala Bachchan. They maintained that they weren’t opposed to putting up Dr Ambedkar’s portrait in the assembly main hall, they wanted to know why Nehru’s portrait which was removed has not been put back in the Assembly. Tomar informed the House about constituting a panel which will recommend whose portrait will be put at which place in the Vidhan Sabha.
The portrait controversy
The issue of country’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s portrait being replaced with Dr BR Ambedkar’s portrait in the main hall of the Vidhan Sabha, rocked the ongoing session. The issue was raised by the Congress MLAs, and the leader of opposition (LoP) Umang Singhar. They maintained that they weren’t opposed to putting up Dr Ambedkar’s portrait in the assembly hall, they wanted to know why Nehru’s portrait, which was removed, hasn’t been put back in Assembly.