Om Birla: New Speaker of 18th Lok Sabha

On June 26th, 2024, BJP MP Om Birla was re-elected as the Speaker of the 18th Lok Sabha with a voice vote for the second time.

Key Points

He has been elected as the Speaker of the Lower House of the Parliament for the second term in a row.
He is as an MP from Rajasthan's Kota Lok Sabha constituency. He was first elected as an MP in 2014.
After the Congress’s Balram Jakhar in 1985, the Kota parliamentarian became the first speaker in 39 years to get re-elected to the Lok Sabha’s highest office.
Under him, in the very first session in 2019, all first-time members got an opportunity to speak and during the first session’s Zero Hour, members raised 1,066 subjects, a record for any one session in the history of the Lok Sabha.
He was the first Speaker to provide MPs with clippings of their speeches to help them circulate them on social media.
He also started a new system of briefing sessions for MPs on bills or policies to improve the quality of debate.
The shifting of Parliament from the colonial-era building to the new building was done during his first tenure.