New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was among nine MPs who took the oath as members of the Rajya Sabha Monday.
The oath was administered by Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar in the Rajya Sabha chamber in the Parliament House.
Jaishankar took the oath in English. This is his second term as a Rajya Sabha MP. He was first elected in 2019.
Besides Jaishankar, the other BJP members who took the oath are Babubhai Jesangbhai Desai (Gujarat), Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala (Gujarat), and Nagendra Ray (West Bengal).
Five Trinamool Congress MPs — Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Prakash Chik Baraik and Samirul Islam — also took the oath.
Of the nine members who took oath Monday, Nagendra Ray, Prakash Chik Baraik, Samirul Islam, Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala and Babubhai Jesangbhai Desai are newly elected.
Four members — O’Brien, Sen, Islam and Ray — took the oath in Bengali while three members took it in Hindi and two in English, a statement from the Rajya Sabha secretariat said.
Leader of the House and Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha P C Mody and other senior officials of the secretariat were also present on the occasion.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh was present as a proxy for the party president and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.
After the ceremony, Dhankhar invited the families of the new MPs to his chamber and it was mostly an all-women delegation.
They included External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s Japanese wife, daughters of O’Brien and Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, wives of Baraik and Islam and the mother and aunt of Sen. The cynosure of all eyes was Islam’s toddler daughter who was bawling as she accompanied her father into Dhankhar’s chamber.
With not just the majority of the new MPs having daughters, but also Chairman Dhankar, there was also an emotional moment where it was mentioned how the world is a better place with daughters in them, said one of the MPs.
PTI