Governor Anandiben Patel appointed senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ramapati Shastri as the pro tem speaker of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
A BJP MLA from Manakpur in Gonda, Shastri will administer the oath to the newly-elected legislators.
The governor has also constituted five-member panels for administering oath of office to the newly-elected MLAs of the 18th UP Legislative Assembly.
The panel members are Suresh Khanna, Fateh Bahadur, Jai Pratap Singh and Rampal (all BJP) and former assembly speaker Mata Prasad Pandey of Samajwadi Party.
Principal Secretary, UP Assembly, Pradeep Dubey, said that Ramapati Shastri had been appointed pro-tem speaker by the Governor and he would be administered oath of office by the governor at Raj Bhawan on Saturday. Shastri is an eight-time MLA.
In the recently concluded UP assembly elections, Ramapati Shastri defeated Ramesh Gautam of Samajwadi Party by a margin of over 42,000 votes. Shastri had earlier served as social welfare minister in the Yogi government and also the previous BJP-led regime headed by Rajnath Singh in 2000-2002.
Shastri was born in Vishnoharpur village of Nawabganj (Gonda) on October 15,1952. He had his primary education at a state-run school in the village and later passed secondary and intermediate examinations from Gandhi Vidyalaya Inter College, Nawabganj. In 1984, he received Shastri degree from Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, Varanasi and during his student days, he joined Jana Sangh before taking the plunge into politics in 1974.