West Bengal: Mamata Banerjee, two other MLAs to take oath at 2 pm in state Assembly

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee is set to take oath as a member of the West Bengal Assembly on Thursday days after she won the keenly contested Bhabanipur bypoll. Two other newly-elected Trinamool Congress legislators Amirul Islam and Jakir Hossain will also take oath at along with her. West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar will administer the oath of office to all three newly elected MLAs at a ceremony, which will be held at 2 pm in the premises of the state Assembly. On 5 October, the Governor had tweeted that the oath-taking ceremony was supposed to be held initially at 11.45 am, but the timing was changed following a request of state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee.

In the recently concluded bypolls, Mamata Banerjee won from Bhabanipur with a margin of over 58,000 votes. According to the Election Commission of India, Mamata Banerjee secured 85,263 votes which are around 71.90 percent of the total votes polled in the bye-elections. Banerjee’s main competition, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal got 26,428 votes and Communist Party of India CPI candidate Srijib Biswas secured 4,226 votes. Jakir Hossain was elected from Jangipur and Amirul Islam was elected from Samserganj assembly seats in West Bengal. While Hossain won by a huge margin of 92,480 votes from the Jangipur constituency, Islam won from Samserganj by a margin of 26,379 votes. According to convention, it is the assembly speaker who administers the oath to legislators while the governor administers oath of office to ministers. But, Dhankar withdrew speaker Biman Banerjee’s power to administer the oath few days before the 30 September bypolls. The results were declared on Sunday. The polling was held in all three constituencies on 30 September.