Bhubaneswar: BJP member Surama Padhy was elected as the Speaker of 17th Odisha Legislative Assembly.

The two-time Ranpur MLA was elected unopposed as no other member had filed the nomination papers for the post of Speaker. With this, she became the second woman Speaker of Odisha Assembly after BJD's Pramila Mallik.

Yesterday, she had filed nomination before Assembly Secretary Dasharathy Satpathy for the post of Speaker of Odisha Legislative Assembly in presence of Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, two deputy CMs KV Singh Deo and Pravati Parida and other BJP's elected members.

The 67-year-old BJP leader was first elected to Assembly from Ranpur Constituency in 2004. She had served as a Minister of State with independent charge for the Department of Cooperation in the BJD-BJP coalition government in Odisha during 2004 to 2009.

In 2024 elections, the BJP has won 78 Assembly seats of the total 147 in Odisha, while the BJD that was in power in last 24 years in the state slipped to second spot with 51 seats.

In the recently concluded Assembly elections, Padhy defeated BJD's Satyanarayan Pradhan by a margin of 15,544 votes in the Ranpur constituency.

As many as 81,439 votes were polled in favour of Padhy while Pradhan got a total of 65895 votes.