New Delhi, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday won the Kota parliamentary seat by a margin of over 41,139 votes, thus becoming the first presiding officer to be re-elected to the lower house in 20 years.

The last Lok Sabha Speaker to be re-elected to the lower house was P A Sangma, who was the presiding officer of the 11th Lok Sabha from 1996 to 1998.

Sangma, who was then a Congress member, was re-elected from Tura in Meghalaya in the 1998 Lok Sabha election.

In 1999, G M C Balayogi, a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) member from Amalapuram, Andhra Pradesh, was elected Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Balayogi died in a helicopter crash in 2002.

After Balayogi, Shiv Sena member Manohar Joshi became the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. However, Joshi lost the 2004 Lok Sabha election from Mumbai North Central constituency to Congress leader Eknath Gaikwad.

In 2004, Somnath Chatterjee, the CPI(M) member who won the Bolpur seat, was elected as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. However, Chatterjee retired from politics before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections following differences with his party.

In 2009, Congress member Meira Kumar won the Sasaram parliamentary seat in Bihar and was elected Speaker of the 15th Lok Sabha. However, Kumar lost the elections in 2014 and 2019.

In 2014, BJP member Sumitra Mahajan was elected Speaker of the Lok Sabha from Indore. BJP did not field Mahajan in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In 2019, Birla of the BJP, Lok Sabha member from Kota, was elected as the Speaker.

In 2024, Birla defeated Prahlad Gunjal of Congress to retain the Kota parliamentary seat.