Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: Pro-tem Speaker Chandramohan Patowary administered the oath to 124 newly elected members of the Assam Legislative Assembly today. AIUDF MLA Badruddin Ajmal was not present in the house due to his preoccupation.
Significantly, 47 of the 124 MLAs, who took oath today, are new faces. Deviating from the exclusive Eighth Schedule language bracket for oath-taking, the House today allowed the members to take oaths in their mother tongues and scripted a history in the state Assembly. The members took oaths in Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, Karbi, Rabha, Rajbongshi, etc.
Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma took an oath as an MLA first. Following him, the four ministers took an oath. The oath-taking took place on the basis of seniority among the members of the house. After the chief minister and the other ministers, the five-time MLAs took an oath, followed by four-time MLAs, three-time MLAs, and two-time MLAs, and then the 47 new MLAs, including five women members, took an oath.
Regarding the decision to allow the members to take an oath in their languages, the Chief Minister later said, “Some of the MLAs approached me with the request to allow them to take an oath in their mother tongues. Though the Constitution doesn’t allow us to take an oath in languages other than the Eighth Schedule’s language, to respect the local languages, I discussed the matter with the pro-speaker and the four ministers. At last, we allowed the members to take an oath in their mother tongues.”
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