Sumitra Mahajan, an eight-time member of Parliament from Indore, is going to take over as the next Lok Sabha speaker, BJP sources have said.
Mahajan won the Lok Sabha elections for the eighth time, one of three members of the 16th Lok Sabha to do so. She has been representing the Indore constituency of Madhya Pradesh since 1989.
She is also a former Union Minister of State of India and minister from 2002 to 2004 and has held portfolios of Human Resources, Communications and Petroleum.
Mahajan, who is likely to be elected on Friday, will be the only second woman speaker after Meira Kumar, who presided over the house for the last 5 years.
This comes almost a week after the veteran BJP leader had said that she was not aware of any move to make her the speaker of new Lok Sabha.
"No one has spoken to me about making me the next Lok Sabha speaker," Zee News had quoted Mahajan.
The MP, who is representing Indore for the eighth term, had said that she had only read about the speculations regarding her appointment as speaker in newspapers.
Parliament Session
The death of the Union Minister Gopinath Munde in a road accident on Tuesday has cast a gloomy shadow over what was to be a special day for the new government.
A new parliamentary session begins on Wednesday allowing the BJP party to occupy the treasury benches after a decade.
Earlier, Congress's Kamal Nath, who is the senior most member of the House, took oath as the pro-tem Speaker at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The Lok Sabha is set to convene briefly to pay tributes to Munde, after which it will be adjourned for the day.
"Politics has changed in terms of responsibilities. Perception and aspiration of people has changed," Nath, the pro-tem Speaker who will administer oath to the new House and conduct proceedings told NDTV on Wednesday.
He added that the Congress "will work to be a constructive opposition."
The 543 MPs were scheduled to be sworn in within two days, but the government has decided to fast-track the process and complete it on Thursday.
On 9 June, the President will address a joint session of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and the weeklong session will end on 11 June.
