New Delhi: Jailed MPs Amritpal Singh and Engineer Rashid were sworn in as Lok Sabha MPs on Friday (July 5) after the two were granted parole to take oath as members of the lower house.
Pro-Khalistan activist and Waris Punjab De chief, Singh, had contested and won the Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate from Punjab’s Khadoor Sahib, while Kashmiri leader Rashid, who has been a two-time MLA from north Kashmir’s Langate constituency and heads Awami Ittehad Party, contested and won from Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla parliamentary constituency as an independent candidate.
Singh is imprisoned in Dibrugarh, Assam under the National Security Act (NSA), while Rashid has been lodged in jail since his arrest by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a terror funding case.
The two were brought to take oath to the parliament complex amid heavy security on Friday. The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha which began on June 24 ended on July 3.
Rashid was granted parole by a Delhi court on Tuesday (July 3) to take oath. Rashid’s parole order passed by Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh of Patiala House Courts includes several restrictions including him not speaking or interacting with the media, not having access to any phone and not interacting with anyone except authority. Rashid’s family members were allowed to be present at the time of the oath-taking ceremony, he is not permitted to click photographs of the ceremony or post it on social media in any form.
Singh on the other hand has been granted parole for four days in order for him to travel to the national capital. Singh’s parole order mentions 10 conditions and states that the period of temporary release would include the time taken from the central jail in Dibrugarh to New Delhi and back.
“Amritpal Singh or any of his relatives shall not be permitted to videograph any statement of Amritpal and circulate any such statement in any electronic form,” according to the order quoted by PTI.
Oath taking rules amended for MPs
The two new independent MPs were sworn-in just days after Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla amended the rules related to oath-taking of newly-elected members, barring them from using any “prefix or suffix to the form of oath or affirmation.”
On July 2, after the Lok Sabha was adjourned sine die, in a release the Lok Sabha secretariat stated that Birla had amended the rules in the Directions by the Speaker, Lok Sabha.
“In pursuance of Rule 389 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha (Seventeenth Edition), the Speaker has made the following amendment to the Directions,” the notice stated.
It said that after clause (2) a new clause shall be added which states: “A Member shall make and subscribe oath or affirmation, as the case may be, in accordance with the form set out for the purpose, in the Third Schedule to the Constitution of India and shall not use any word or expression or make any remark as a prefix or suffix to the form of oath or affirmation.”
The amendment comes after the 18th Lok Sabha saw the newly elected members include various slogans while taking oath, making into a rally between the Treasury Benches and the opposition members while taking oath.
While opposition leaders of the INDIA alliance had chanted “Jai Samvidhan”, “Jai Bheem”, including some Samajwadi Party MPs even chanting “PDA (picchda, dalit, adivasi) Zindabad”, some religious slogans were also chanted by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP MP Arun Govil, ended his oath with “Jai Shree Ram”, with members of the opposition benches shouting “Jai Awadesh” in a reference to Samajwadi Party MP Awadesh Prasad who won from the Faizabad constituency which includes Ayodhya.
Leader of the opposition Rahul Gandhi carried a copy of the Constitution while taking oath and ended with “Jai Samvidhan”.
