New Delhi: Meira Kumar was on Wednesday unanimously elected the Speaker of Lok Sabha.
Kumar, five-time MP and the first dalit woman to occupy the office, was elected to the post after resolutions moved by the ruling side and the Opposition were adopted unanimously by members by a voice vote and amidst loud thumping of desks.
A diplomat-turned-politician and Congress' Dalit face, Meira Kumar has come a long way since entering electoral politics in the mid-1980s to becoming the first woman to be chosen to occupy the high office of the Lok Sabha Speaker.
Kumar, who is the daughter of late Congress stalwart Jagjivan Ram, came out as a surprise choice over veteran Congressman from Andhra Pradesh, Kishore Chandra Deo, whose name figured prominently in the last fortnight as the person being tipped for the Speaker's post.
A five-time MP, the 64-year-old Kumar had quit the Indian Foreign Service in 1985 to join politics. She resigned from the Congress in 2002 citing differences with the party leadership only to rejoin it two years later.
Soft-spoken Kumar first joined the government as a deputy minister in the PV Narasimha Rao ministry and was made a minister with a Cabinet rank when UPA took over the reins of power from NDA after the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.
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