Surama Padhy To Be New Speaker Of Odisha Assembly

Bhubaneswar: Senior BJP leader Surama Padhy, MLA from Ranpur and former Minister, is all set to become the new Speaker of the Odisha Assembly.

After Mohan Charan Majhi was sworn-in as Odisha Chief Minister along with his council of ministers on Wednesday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now putting focus on the selection of new Speaker of the state Assembly.

As per sources, the saffron party has chosen Surama Padhy to be the new Speaker after taking into consideration her experience.

After three successive defeats, Surama Padhy emerged as winning from Ranpur Assembly seat in the recently-concluded elections. She defeated Satyanarayan Pradhan of Biju Janata Dal by a margin of 15,544 votes.

Surama (63) has last won the seat in 2004 when she also served as the Cooperation Minister in the Naveen Patnaik-led BJP-BJP alliance government.

She is a native of Ranpur and completed her Master of Arts in 1982 from the erstwhile Ravenshaw College.