State MPs to take oath today

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 17

Congress Party’s Faridkot MP Mohammad Sadiq attracted eyeballs in the Lok Sabha today as he jumped rows to settle down in the front column right next to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her son and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi. Sadiq had everyone around asking, “Who is he?”

As MPs from Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir took oath, Sadiq kept his seat next to party leaders religiously joining them in returning greetings as new MPs took rounds of opposition benches after finishing their oaths.

At one point Sadiq got up from his seat to rush towards the oath taking area. He had mistook the name of Mohammad Bashir, a Kerala MP, for his own. Congress’ K Suresh had to pull back the Faridkot lawmaker and tell him that his turn will come tomorrow when other Punjab MPs are called. Sadiq, a Punjabi folk singer and a first-time MP, relented but went back to giving Sonia company even getting chatty with his leader every now and then.

Other Congress MPs from Punjab were also present in the House today although they will take oaths tomorrow as the process is moving state-wise in alphabetical order.

Patiala MP Preneet Kaur caught everyone’s attention for her visible forehead injury which she explained with a “fall”. Also present were other Manish Tewari, Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Santokh Chaudhary, JS Dimpa and Amar Singh.

All Haryana MPs took oath today with Sunita Duggal (Sirsa) and Arvind Sharma (Rohtak) speaking in Sanskrit and the rest – Sanjay Bhatia (Karnal), Dharambir Singh (Bhiwani) Brijendra Singh (Hisar), Ramesh Kaushik (Sonepat), Nayab Singh Saini (Kurukshetra) – using Hindi.

RL Kataria and Rao Inderjit took oath with other ministers this morning as did Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur and Udampur MP Jitendra Singh.

The rest of Himachal MPs – Kishan Kapoor (Kangra), Ram Swaroop Sharma (Mandi), Suresh Kashyap (Shimla) — took oath later in the evening as part of the state-wise roster and all spoke in Hindi.

From Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah (Srinagar), Mohd Akbar Lone (Baramulla), and Hasnain Masoodi (Anantnag) took oath in Kashmiri and Urdu, while Jugal Kishore (Jammu) used Dogri and Tsering Namgyal (Ladakh) English.