Bihar MLAs take oath in 16th state Legislative Assembly

Patna: Wearing designer “Bandis” (waist coat), “Paag” (customary cap of Maithla region), the newly elected Legislators took oath on Tuesday as members of the 16th state Legislative Assembly. The oath taking function which was scheduled on the opening day of the maiden session of the new House could not be taken up yesterday due to death of RLSP MLA Basant Kumar and was done on Tuesday. Since Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is member of state Legislative Council, hence Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav was first to take oath. [caption id=“attachment_2528782” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representative Image. PTI [/caption] The CM was present in the House and greeted the newly elected members. Tejaswi was followed by brother Tej Pratap Yadav, Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Bijendra Prasad Yadav, Ashok Choudhary, Shrawan Kumar in the pecking order. After oath taking by leader of Opposition Prem Kumar, the MLAs were called in accordance with the serial number of the constituency to take oath and sign a register. Tej Pratap Yadav, elder son of RJD President Lalu Prasad, who was asked by Bihar Governor Ram Nath Kovind to read the pledge for a second time during swearing in function on November 20, did not fault this time. But, many other members fumbled and were told by speaker Sadanand Singh to read the words of the pledge correctly. Senior BJP member Bhagirathi Devi from Ramnagar in West Champaran district had great difficulty in reading the words in the written pledge. Interim Speaker asked her to read correctly and even spell the words and asked her to repeat them. Later, Bhagirathi Devi was heard telling the Protem Speaker that he made her read the pledge four times. The Protem Speaker had to remind a large number of members that they have to take pledge either in the name of “Ishwar” (god) or “Satya Nishtha” (allegiance to truth) and not both. He was heard asking members not to use mobile phones inside the House and even reprimanded a member for clicking photograph from his cell phone of members taking oath. Fumbling and forgetting due procedure could not be helped considering the fact that there are 99 first timers in the newly constituted 16th Bihar Legislative Assembly. While majority of members took oath in Hindi, some read the pledge in Maithli, Urdu, Sanskrit and English, the five languages permissible for the purpose. PTI