Veteran leader and six-time legislator Tapas Roy will be sworn in as pro-tem Speaker of the West Bengal Assembly on Tuesday, May 12, with Governor R.N. Ravi set to administer the oath of office. Roy will, in turn, preside over the oath-taking of 293 newly elected legislators on May 13 and May 14 following the recently concluded state Assembly polls.
Although the Assembly has 294 constituencies, only 293 legislators will take their oaths now because the Election Commission of India ordered repolling in the entire Falta constituency of South 24 Parganas after reported electoral malpractices on April 29. The repolling is scheduled for May 21, with results due on May 24, leaving one seat pending until then.
A pro-tem Speaker is a temporary presiding officer appointed to oversee initial proceedings of a newly elected Lok Sabha or State Assembly until a regular Speaker is chosen. The appointee is usually the house’s senior-most member and is responsible for administering oaths to incoming members and conducting early formalities.
Roy is the senior-most legislator among the 207 BJP MLAs who, according to the source, have helped the Bharatiya Janata Party form its first government in West Bengal since Independence after this election. State BJP insiders say Roy is also a likely candidate to become the party’s regular Speaker of the Assembly.
Roy’s electoral career began in 1996 when he was elected as a Congress MLA from the pre-delimitation Vidyasagar constituency. He won again in 2001 from the pre-delimitation Bara-Bazar seat as a Trinamool Congress candidate. In 2011-when Trinamool ended the 34-year Left Front rule-Roy was elected from Baranagar on a Trinamool ticket and was re-elected there in 2016 and 2021. On March 4, 2024, he quit Trinamool Congress, resigned his legislative seat and joined the BJP. He contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Kolkata (Uttar) for the BJP but lost to four-time Trinamool MP Sudip Bandopadhyay. In the recent Assembly polls this year, Roy stood as the BJP candidate from Maniktala in North Kolkata and defeated Trinamool’s Shreya Pande by over 125,000 votes.
Original Source: https://theshillongtimes.com/2026/05/12/veteran-leader-tapas-roy-to-take-oath-as-pro-tem-speaker-of-bengal-assembly-today/
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Publish Date: 2026-05-12 11:28:00
