New Delhi:
Congress president Rahul Gandhi Monday took oath as member of the 17th Lok Sabha. Gandhi won the election from Wayanad in Kerala. He had also contested from the Gandhi bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh but was defeated by BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani by a margin of over 55,000 votes.
Rahul took the oath in English. Minutes before taking oath, he tweeted that his fourth consecutive term as a member of the Lok Sabha begins Monday. "Representing Wayanad, Kerala, I begin my new innings in Parliament by taking my oath this afternoon, affirming that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India", he tweeted.
Earlier today, Leader of the House and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Home Minister Amit Shah were among those who took oath as Members of the 17th Lok Sabha that commenced on Monday.
As soon as the House met, the Members stood in silence for a few minutes as per the convention "to mark the solemn occasion of the first sitting of the 17th Lok Sabha". When Modi's name was called out by the Secretary General for taking oath, Members from the ruling NDA thumped the desk greeting the Prime Minister with slogans such as 'Modi Modi' and "Bharat Mata ki Jai.
The panel of presiding officers - K Suresh, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh and B Mehtab - took oath as Members after the Prime Minister. While the Prime Minister and most of Union Ministers took oath in Hindi, Union Ministers Harsh Vardhan, Sripad Naik, Ashwini Chaubey and Pratap Chandra Sarangi took oath in Sanskrit.
While D V Sadananda Gowda and Prahlad Joshi took oath in Kannada, Harsimrat Kaur Badal took oath in Punjabi. Union Ministers Arvind Ganpat Sawant, Raosaheb Patil Danbe took oath in Marathi, Jitendra Singh in Dogri, Babul Supriyo in English, Rameshwar Teli in Assamese and Debashree Choudhury in Bangla.
BJD leader Mehtab took oath in Odiya. UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, TMC leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, and DMK leaders Kanizmohi and A Raja were present in the House on the occasion.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi was not seen when the House met. Earlier the new session began with playing of the National Anthem. Before the House met, Virendra Kumar was sworn in as Pro-Term Speaker by President Ramnath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Several members took oath in their mother tongue, like most of the YSR Congress Party MPs in Telegu. Many members from Assam took oath in Assamese. BJP members from Bihar Gopal jee Thakur and Ashok Kumar Yadav took oath in Madhubani. BJP member from Bihar Jarnardhan Singh Sigriwal expressed desire to take oath in Bhojpuri, but the Lok Sabha Secretary General said the language was not in the eight schedules of the Constitution.
Home Minister and BJP president Amit Shah thumped the desk as Tapir Gao from Arunachal Pradesh approached the mike stand to take oath. Secretary General of Lok Sabha Snehlata Shrivastava by mistake called petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan to take oath and soon rectified it as the latter is a Rajya Sabha Member.
