Pramila Mallik Elected As First Woman Speaker of Odisha Assembly

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Assembly got its first-ever woman Speaker on Friday. Pramila Malik was elected as the first woman Speaker of the Odisha Assembly. The post of Speaker of Odisha Assembly was vacant following resignation of Bikram Keshari Arukha from the post.

The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) on September 20 named senior party leader and Binjharpur MLA Pramila Mallik as its candidate for the post of Assembly Speaker. After the declaration, she resigned from her post of Minister of Revenue and Disaster Management on Thursday. After that she filed her nomination papers for the post of Speaker of the Odisha Assembly.

Mallik is a six-time legislator from the Binjharpur constituency in Jajpur district. She got elected for the first time in 1990 to the Assembly on a Janata Dal ticket. Later, she won the Assembly elections in 2000, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019 on the BJD ticket.

Mallik had also earlier served as a minister in the Naveen Patnaik cabinet but was forced to resign in February 2011, in the wake of the multi-crore dal scam.