Fourty-three new members, both newcomers and re-elected, took the oath in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, the first day of the Monsoon session.
The MPs who took the oath included Union ministers like M Venkaiah Naidu, Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman. Those who returned to Parliament are P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Amar Singh.
The oath-taking, which lasted around 40 minutes once again magnified the diversity of the country with members taking the pledge in various languages from Kannada to Tamil, Sanskrit, Hindi, Odiya, Marathi and English. While most of them took oath in the name of God, others took the pledge in solemnly affirmed.
Union Minister Y S Chaudhary (TDP) was the first to be called, but he was absent. Union Environment Minister Anil Dave, who was recently inducted into the Council of Ministers, and RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti were not present in the House when their names were called initially, but took the oath later.
From Karnataka, Nirmala, who was previously a Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh, and K C Ramamoorthy (Congress) took oath as new members.
Opposition has stacked up in the Upper House experienced faces in Chidambaram, Sibal, Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma and Ram Jethmalani, who was a former BJP MP, is now supported by the RJD.
MPs cutting across party lines thumped their desks to cheer the members taking oath, while visitors’ gallery was packed with family and friends of the new lawmakers, who occasionally cheered their leaders by going against the norms of the House.
Published 18 July 2016, 19:40 IST