Niceties, novelty and naivety mark oath-taking ceremony of MLAs
CHANDIGARH: Niceties, novelty and naivety marked the oathtaking ceremony of the members of 14th Haryana Vidhan Sabha here on Monday.
Since 44 of the total 90 legislators were first-timers, most of them touched feet of senior leaders, including chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, leader of opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda and pro-tem speaker Raghuvir Kadian, one of the senior-most member in the House.
Kadian opened his address to the House in English and said the oath was to be administered first to chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, then to deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala of the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) — the junior partner in the coalition government — and then to women members. Subsequently, he said, all remaining MLAs would be administered oath in an alphabetical order of the districts they were elected from.
There also were few first-timers who did not know the exact way to reach the Speaker from their respective bench to take oath. While most of them took oath in Hindi, some resorted to English. Three MLAs preferred Sanskrit and two took oath in Punjabi.
JJP legislator Naina Chautala was the first who touched the feet of Kadian before taking oath. Congress’ Sadhaura MLA Renu Bala was seen meandering through benches to find way to reach the Speaker.
Same was the struggle for Shalley, the Congress’ MLA from Naraingarh, and independent MLA from Pundri Randhir Singh Gollen.
Like few other young Congress’ MLAs, the party’s firsttimer from Sadhaura (SC) seat, Varun Choudhry, went to touch feet of Hooda before taking the oath and later touched the feet of the acting Speaker, Kadian, a six-time MLA.
Interestingly, Congress’ rookie from Rewari Chiranjeev Rao and JJP’s MLA from Narnaund Ram Kumar Gautam took the oath in English.
BJP’s Pehowa first-time MLA, former hockey captain Sandeep Singh, and Congress’ MLA from Kalanwali (SC) Shishpal Singh took the oath in Punjabi.
BJP’s Kamal Gupta from Hisar, Ghanshyam Dass from Yamunanagar and Ram Kumar from Indri took the oath in Sanskrit.
There were first-timers like JJP’s Narwana MLA Ram Niwas and Shahbad MLA Ram Karan, who had to be assisted by Kadian by administering the oath sentence after sentence.
Conspicuously, there was neither any eye contact nor exchange of greetings between Dushyant Chautala, his mother Naina Chautala and his estranged uncle Abhay Chautala, Indian National Lok Dal’s (INLD) Ellenabad MLA, throughout the ceremony.