In a first, Ranjeet K. Dass elected Assam Assembly Speaker for second term

Key points

• Ranjeet Kumar Dass was on Thursday (May 21, 2026) elected Speaker of the Assam Assembly for a second term, a first in the State.
• The newly elected 126-member House also set a precedent on the inaugural day of its first session by allowing MLAs belonging to the ethnic communities to take the oath in their mother tongues.
• This followed a formal request from Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to honour the State’s diverse linguistic heritage.
• The four-day session opened with Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya appointing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Chandra Mohan Patowary, the senior-most member of the House, as the Pro-tem Speaker.
• Patowary, who represents the Tihu Assembly seat, administered the oath to the Chief Minister and four Cabinet Ministers — Atul Bora of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Rameswar Teli and Ajanta Neog of the BJP, and Charan Boro of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF).