2-day session of Gujarat Assembly to begin in Gandhinagar; newly-elected MLAs to take oath

Ahmedabad: The newly-elected MLAs of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly will take oath on the first day of the two-day session of the House on Monday, an official has said.

Elections for the post of Speaker and Deputy Speaker will be held on Tuesday.

Protem speaker and senior-most Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Yogesh Patel will administer the oath to the 182 MLAs in the first session of the 15th Legislative Assembly in the state capital Gandhinagar on Monday, Gujarat Assembly secretary D M Patel told PTI on Sunday.

On the second day of the two-day session on Tuesday, the new members will meet to elect the Speaker, he said.

As per an official notification issued by the Assembly Secretariat, elections for the posts of Speaker and Deputy Speaker will be held in the first half on Tuesday and other businesses will be taken up in the second half.

The BJP, which won the seventh consecutive term in the state with a record mandate in recent elections, has declared Shankar Chaudhary and Jethabhai Bharwad as candidates for the posts of Speaker and Deputy Speaker, respectively.

Bhupendra Patel took oath as the 18th chief minister along with 16 ministers on December 12, four days after the results of the Assembly polls were announced.

While the BJP won 156 seas in the 182-member House, the opposition Congress finished a distant second with 17 seats. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) bagged five seats in the debut Assembly contest in Gujarat. Three seats went to Independents and one to the Samajwadi Party.