Thursday, January 5 2006 19:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was today (Jan 05, 2006) unanimously elected as a regional representative to the Standing Committee of the Conference of Commonwealth Speakers and Presiding Officers.

The concluding plenary of the 18th Conference in Nairobi, Kenya also unanimously adopted an amendment proposing to bifurcate the Asian Region in the Conference and create India as a separate region, an official release said here today.

India's offer to host the twentieth edition of the Conference in New Delhi in 2010 was also accepted by the plenary.