Oaths and protests: 18th Lok Sabha off to combative start

Over 260 parliamentarians across parties took oath as the 18th Lok Sabha opened on Monday but the first day of Parliament after the general elections was marked by acrimony between the government and an energised Opposition over a raft of issues ranging from the Emergency to the Constitution, and irregularities roiling premier examinations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took oath as the Lok Sabha member from Varanasi for a third consecutive time, fired the first salvo in his introductory remarks outside the House when he invoked the Emergency to hit out at the Opposition.

The PM said June 25, which marks the anniversary of the Emergency, should serve as a reminder of how democracy was throttled and the Constitution was insulted. “We should resolve that such an act is never repeated,” the PM said.

Without naming the Congress he said, “The new generation of India will never forget that the Constitution of India was completely rejected, every part of the Constitution was torn to pieces, the country was turned into a prison, democracy was completely suppressed.”

Hours later, buoyed by their better-than-expected showing in the Lok Sabha polls, Opposition members held aloft copies of the Constitution when Modi took oath and chanted “NEET” when embattled Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan walked to the podium.

Also Read | Lok Sabha session: ‘NEET’ jeers by Opposition as Dharmendra Pradhan takes oath

“The attack that the PM and Amit Shah are launching on the Constitution is not acceptable to us, we will not let this happen. So, we held the Constitution while taking the oath... Our message is going across, no power can touch the Constitution of India,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters.

The two-day oath ceremony will be followed by the election to pick the Lok Sabha Speaker on June 26 and President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses on June 27. The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha will also be picked for the first time in a decade. The session will conclude on July 3 and reassemble for the monsoon sitting on July 22.

The session is likely to set the stage for the recalibration of the balance of power between the government and the Opposition, which will try to corner the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on issues such as price rise, food inflation, deaths on account of an unprecedented heatwave and the recent instances of irregularities in the conduct of examinations that have made millions of students restive and cast a shadow on the efficacy of institutions mandated to conduct examinations.

In the 543-member House, the NDA has 293 members, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at 240. The Opposition’s Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) has 236 members, of which the Congress has 99.

A shadow of hostility has hung over the House since the Opposition started taking potshots at the government over allegedly skewed results in the undergraduate level National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG), paper leaks that led to the cancellation of UGC-NET, and the postponement of other exams such as CSIR-NET and NEET-PG. In all, a total of 3.7 million students are affected by the postponements and cancellations.

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Then, the choice of the pro-tem speaker, Odisha BJP MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, sparked a controversy. Members of the INDIA bloc first gathered at the spot where a statue of Mahatma Gandhi used to stand, before holding copies of the Constitution inside the Parliament premises.

Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju’s clarification that the government has stuck to the rules of appointing the longest-serving member with consecutive terms, failed to cut ice with the Opposition that backs eight-term Congress MP K Suresh. Rijiju on Friday said Mahtab has had seven uninterrupted terms as Lok Sabha member, making him eligible for the post, while Suresh lost elections in 1998 and 2004.

“The ruling party hasn’t forgotten their haughtiness...we can see that they are ignoring the key subjects of the country...the whole Dalit community in India could witness a historic scene if K Suresh were appointed as pro-tem Speaker...today, BJP has not just neglected Congress, INDIA alliance and K Suresh but the whole Dalit community...” said Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi.

Congress members K Suresh (Congress), TR Baalu (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Sudip Bandyopadhyay (Trinamool Congress), who were called to take oath as they were also appointed as panel of chairpersons, did not turn up.

The House commenced at 10am and newly elected MPs began taking their oaths in English and a host of Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Dogri, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati and Odia.

Also Read | From Dogri to Sanskrit, new MPs take oath in Indian languages as 18th Lok Sabha commences

Modi took his oath in Hindi amid slogans of “Modi Modi” and “Jai Shri Ram” from the treasury benches. While he was taking the oath, some Opposition members rose to their feet, holding copies of the Constitution. When Union home minister Amit Shah came to take the oath, they again held up the copies of the Constitution, but many others remained seated.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh, road transport minister Nitin Gadkari, telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan women and child development minister Annapurna Devi, and urban development minister ML Khattar were among those who took oath in Hindi. Pradhan – who faced sloganeering in the House – took oath in Odia.

Although a large part of the oath-taking was a routine exercise, the oath- taking of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan was met with chants of “NEET, NEET, NEET”, a reference to alleged irregularities in the entrance test for undergraduate medical courses.

Leaders of the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP criticised Opposition MPs for taking out a Save Constitution march to Parliament, saying that it should now consider how to take the country on the path of progress and end politicising issues as the elections were over.

It was the Congress government which had “murdered” democracy and the Constitution by imposing Emergency in 1975, BJP MP and former Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai said.

In the evening, President Droupadi Murmu hosted the council of ministers for dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan.