A Chair That Has Waited Since December. A Man Who Has Waited a Lifetime.
On December 26, 2025, the Tripura Legislative Assembly lost its Speaker. Biswa Bandhu Sen — a four-time MLA from Dharmanagar, a veteran of Tripura's political landscape, and a man who had presided over the Assembly through some of its most turbulent sessions — passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru after four and a half months of medical treatment. He was 72 years old.
For nearly three months, the Speaker's chair in the Agartala Assembly hall remained vacant — a visible absence at the head of a legislative chamber that continued to function under Acting Speaker Ram Prasad Paul. On the fourth day of the ongoing budget session, March 18, 2026, that absence was filled. And in the filling of it, Tripura quietly made a piece of history.
Rampada Jamatia — a 69-year-old tribal leader, two-time MLA from Bagma constituency in Gomati district, former minister, former ONGC employee, and former jute mill worker — was elected unopposed as the new Speaker of the Tripura Legislative Assembly, becoming only the second person from the state's Janajati communities to hold the position in the more than five decades since Tripura attained full statehood in 1972.
The Journey: From ONGC to the Speaker's Chair
Rampada Jamatia's life is a genuinely unlikely story — and it is worth telling properly, because it illustrates something important about the range of experiences that eventually find their way into Indian legislative leadership.
He began his working life in a jute mill in Tripura — the kind of early employment that is as far from legislative chambers as it is possible to get. He went on to work for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, retiring from ONGC before making the turn toward active politics. It was not a career built on inherited political capital or dynastic connections. It was built on community presence, organisational work, and the kind of credibility that comes from being known as a person of substance across decades of tribal social and political life.
Before his entry into electoral politics, Jamatia served as a leader of the Jamatia Hoda — the traditional apex body of the Jamatia community, one of Tripura's nineteen recognised tribal communities whose traditional governance structures have coexisted with the state's formal democratic institutions since independence. His leadership of that body gave him both the community credibility and the organisational experience that eventually translated into electoral success when he joined the BJP in 2017.
He was first elected to the Tripura Legislative Assembly in 2018 from the Bagma (ST) constituency in Gomati district — part of the wave that swept the Left out of power in Tripura after 25 uninterrupted years and brought Biplab Kumar Deb and the BJP to government. He won again in 2023 under Chief Minister Manik Saha, consolidating his position as a dependable voice from the tribal reserved constituency in Gomati. Between those victories, he served as Minister of Tribal Welfare and Industry and Commerce — including Handloom, Handicrafts, and Sericulture — portfolios directly connected to the livelihoods and cultural heritage of the tribal communities that form approximately 31 percent of Tripura's population.
The Election: Unanimous, Unopposed, and Warmly Welcomed
The formal election process on March 18 was brief and uncontested. Acting Speaker Ram Prasad Paul announced that three separate nomination proposals had been received supporting Jamatia's candidature: one moved by Chief Minister Manik Saha and seconded by MLA Swapna Das Paul; one by Forest Minister Animesh Debbarma with the support of Tipra Motha MLA Chitta Ranjan Debbarma; and one by Cooperation Minister Shukla Charan Noatia, supported by Chief Whip Kalyani Saha Roy. No competing nomination was filed. Jamatia was declared elected unanimously.
The breadth of support across the NDA alliance — BJP, Tipra Motha, and IPFT all formally endorsing the nomination — reflects a political consensus that was carefully assembled before the budget session began. Tipra Motha's participation in the endorsement is particularly noteworthy: Pradyot Kishore Debbarman, the party's founder and the most prominent voice of Tripura's tribal political assertion, has been willing to back Jamatia's elevation despite ongoing tensions with the BJP over the broader political future of tribal rights in the state.
Chief Minister Manik Saha's congratulatory remarks were warm and specific. He noted Jamatia's credentials as a two-time MLA who had been engaged in both politics and social work, and who had served as a minister — describing him as someone who would maintain neutrality and script new history. He expressed confidence on behalf of the treasury bench and the people of Tripura, wishing the new Speaker an auspicious and successful tenure.
Leader of the Opposition Jitendra Chaudhury's remarks were perhaps even more revealing in their brevity and humanity. He told the new Speaker: I have known him since his early days working in a jute mill in Tripura. The Opposition bench, he noted, was small — but he expressed hope that it would get the opportunity to speak. It was the kind of congratulation that acknowledges a shared history rather than simply performing political courtesy.
The Historical Weight: Only the Second Tribal Speaker in 54 Years
The significance of Rampada Jamatia's election as Speaker must be understood in its proper historical context.
Tripura became a full state in 1972. In the 54 years since, the Speaker's chair has been occupied by politicians from across the state's political spectrum — but only once before by a leader from its Janajati communities. Sudhanwa Debbarma, a CPI(M) leader, held the Speaker's post from 1978 to 1983 — a period nearly five decades ago. In all the years between then and today, the tribal communities that form almost a third of Tripura's population had not seen one of their own in the Assembly's presiding chair.
Jamatia's election changes that. It does so through a BJP government that has consistently presented tribal inclusion as a political and governance priority — with the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council, the ADC elections, and the state's tribal welfare portfolio all receiving significant political attention under successive BJP-led governments. Whether this inclusion translates into substantive policy improvement for tribal communities — in land rights, language protection, economic opportunity, and the preservation of traditional governance structures — is a separate and more complex question. But symbolic representation at the highest levels of an institution matters, and the Speaker's chair is among the most visible and powerful positions in any state's democratic structure.
The Budget Session Context: Universities, Finance, and a New Speaker
Jamatia assumes the Speaker's chair in the middle of a busy and consequential budget session. Finance Minister Pranajit Singha Roy presented Tripura's budget for FY 2026-27 on March 16 — a tax-free deficit budget of โน34,212.31 crore that reflects the state's continuing dependence on central transfers while projecting investments in health, education, and infrastructure.
The session is also scheduled to consider three bills that would establish new universities in the state: Tripura Women's University, Tripura University of Health Sciences, and Tripura Technical University. These are significant institutional additions that, if passed and resourced properly, would substantially expand Tripura's higher education architecture and reduce the outmigration of students to Kolkata, Guwahati, and other cities for professional education.
As the presiding officer of the House, Jamatia will manage the passage of this legislation — ensuring debate is meaningful, procedural rules are respected, and the Opposition, however small, is heard. Chaudhury's comment about hoping the small Opposition bench would get to speak was a gentle reminder that the Speaker's neutrality is tested most visibly in exactly those moments when a government with a comfortable majority might prefer speed over scrutiny.
The Chair Matters When It Is Filled Right
The Speaker of a state legislative assembly is not a ceremonial position. It is the guardian of legislative procedure, the protector of minority voices, the referee between a government that wants to move fast and an opposition that wants to be heard. When the Chair is occupied by someone who understands this responsibility — who treats the position as a constitutional trust rather than a political reward — the legislature functions better for everyone who passes through it.
Rampada Jamatia brings to the Chair something that cannot be manufactured or appointed: a life lived across communities, industries, and institutions before arriving at the assembly. The jute mill. The ONGC. The Jamatia Hoda. Two terms representing the people of Bagma. A ministerial portfolio for tribal welfare. These are not items on a resume. They are the accumulated texture of a life that has touched Tripura at many levels.
Whether that life translates into a Speakership that honours the Constitution's expectation of impartiality will be visible in the sessions ahead — in how he rules on procedural motions, in whether he allows the Opposition its speaking time, in how he handles the moments when the treasury bench's instincts and the House's procedural norms pull in different directions.
The Chair has been empty since December. Today it was filled by a man whose journey to it was as unexpected as it was earned. Tripura will be watching what he does with it.
