Rajya Sabha chairperson M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday administered the oath or affirmation to 45 of 61 members newly elected to the upper house.
Owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the ceremony was held inside Rajya Sabha chambers during inter-session for the first time. Other MPs who were not present for the ceremony will be administered the oath at a later date.
Among the members who took oath were 18 BJP MPs, including Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sumer Singh Solanki from Madhya Pradesh; Nabam Rebia from Arunachal Pradesh; Bhubaneswar Kalita and Biswajit Daimary from Assam; Vivek Thakur from Bihar; Abhay Bharadwaj, Ramilaben Bara and Narhari Amin from Gujarat; Ram Chander Jangra from Haryana; Indu Goswami from Himachal Pradesh; Deepak Prakash from Jharkhand; Ashok Gasti and Iranna Kadadi from Karnataka; Udayanraje Bhosale and Bhagwat Karad from Maharashtra; Maharaja Leishemba Sanajaoba from Manipur;; and Rajendra Gehlot from Rajasthan. K Vanlalvena from Mizoram also took oath; his party thee Mizo National Front is an NDA ally.
The BJP’s strength in the House has gone up; even though the party is still short of majority in the upper house, it now has 8 MPs in the Rajya Sabha up from 75. The tally of the National Democratic Alliance has also gone up from 90 to over 100 in the 242 member house. Parties that are friendly to the BJP, include the BJD and AIADMK which have nine MPs each and the YSRCP that has six.
From the Congress, which has 40 MPs in the house, the leaders who took oath were KTS Tulsi from Chhattisgarh; Shaktisinh Gohil from Gujarat; Deepender Singh Hooda from Haryana; Mallikarjun Kharge from Karnataka; Digvijay Singh from Madhya Pradesh; Rajeev Satav from Maharashtra; and Neeraj Dangi and KC Venugopal from Rajasthan.
Oath was also administered to JDU’s Harivansh and Ramnath Thakur and RJD’s AD Singh and Prem Chand Gupta from Bihar; and to Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, of the CPI-M from West Bengal. Priyanka Chaturvedi from Shiv Sena, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and RPI chief and minister of state for social justice and empowerment Ramdas Athawale were administered the oath from Maharashtra.
Three MPs from YSRCP who represent Andhra Pradesh include Ayodhya Rami Reddy Alla, Pilli Subhaschandra Bose and Venkataramana Rao Mopidevi.
Representing Odisha, Muzibulla Khan, Subash Singh, Sujeet Kumar and Mamata Mohanta from the Biju Janata Dal also took oath. From Tamil Nadu, KP Munusamy of the AIADMK and M Thambidurai of the AIADMK and GK Vasan of the Tamil Maanila Congress also took oath.
Of the 61 new MPs, 49 were elected to the upper house for the first time while 12 were re-elected. After vacancies arose in March in 20 states, 42 were elected unopposed, including 28 first timers, and elections were held for 19 vacancies and 15 other first-timers won a berth in the Rajya Sabha.
Addressing the new members, Naidu said they should reflect on their role and responsibility and not fall for the temptation of disrupting the House for short-term gains.
