Vipin Parmar unanimously elected Speaker of Himachal Pradesh assembly - Hindustan Times
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Vipin Parmar unanimously elected Speaker of Himachal Pradesh assembly

Hindustan Times, Chandigarh | ByHT Correspondent
Feb 26, 2020 03:08 PM IST

Post had been vacant since January 16 when Rajeev Bindal resigned to take charge as president of the state unit of the BJP

SHIMLA: A day after he resigned from the health ministry, Vipin Singh Parmar was on Wednesday unanimously elected the 17th Speaker of the Himachal Pradesh assembly on Wednesday.

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Deputy Speaker Hans Raj announced this in the assembly on the second day of the ongoing budget session here after the passage of four resolutions for Parmar’s election as the Speaker. One of the resolutions was presented by chief minister Jai Ram Thakur.

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The four resolutions are a part of assembly procedure.

Thakur, who is also the leader of the House, along with opposition leader Mukesh Agnihotri took him to the Speaker’s chair amid loud applause.

Subsequently, Parmar took charge as the new Speaker.

The 55-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party leader was unanimously declared the new Speaker as no other member of the assembly filed a nomination.

The Congress, with a strength of 21 members in the 68-member House, did not file any nomination for the post.

The ruling BJP has 44 MLAs, whereas the CPM has a lone MLA. Two independent MLAs are supporting the ruling BJP government.

HIGH COMMAND’S CHOICE

The Speaker’s post had been lying vacant since January 16 when then Speaker Rajeev Bindal submitted his resignation. Bindal was later elected as the president of the state unit of the BJP.

On Monday, the chief minister told the media that the BJP high command had decided to appoint Parmar as the new Speaker.

Thakur said he had spoken to BJP national president JP Nadda and mentioned that Nadda finalised the name of the MLA from Sulah constituency in Kangra district for the Speaker’s post.

Following that, Parmar filed his nomination papers in the assembly on Tuesday.

LAW GRADUATE TURNED LAWMAKER

Born on March 15, 1964, in Kangra’s Nanao village, Parmar is a law graduate from Government College, Dharamshala.

He was the organising secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for more than eight years in the ’80s and went on to become the national secretary.

He was president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s (BJYM) Kangra-Chamba unit. Later, he became the Kangra BJP district president.

A protégé of former chief minister Shanta Kumar, Parmar contested his first election from Sulah, the home turf of his mentor, in the 1995 byelections but lost.

He was elected to the assembly from Sulah for the first time in 1998. He lost the next election but was re-elected in 2007. During this period, he served as the state BJP general secretary twice.

He lost the 2012 assembly election but was elected for the third term in 2017 and appointed health and family welfare minister in the Jai Ram Thakur cabinet. He also held the portfolios of medical education, ayurveda and science and technology.

He was the vice-president in the outgoing state BJP executive.

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