Mamata takes oath of office

Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee took her oath of office on Thursday as a member of the Legislative Assembly. She was administered the oath by Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at the state Assembly. She took the oath to the office in Bengali.

After administering the oath, Dhankhar termed it as a "historic moment". Usually, the Governor administers the oath to the Chief Minister and her Cabinet colleagues while the Speaker administers the oath to MLAs. But this is one rare occasion in the history of the state Assembly when taking a departure from the usual practice, the Governor himself administered the oath to Banerjee along with the two other newly-elected MLAs — Jakir Hossain from Samserganj Assembly constituency and Amirul Islam from Jangipur. The Speaker used to administer the oath based on the powers conferred on him by the Governor in terms of Article 188 of the Constitution. However, the power from the Speaker was withdrawn in mid-September. The BJP MLAs, however, did not attend the oath-taking ceremony at the state Assembly.

Breaking all previous records, Banerjee recently won by a record margin of 58,835 votes in the Bhabanipore bypoll. Hossain also won by a huge margin of 92,480 votes while Islam won by 26,379 votes.

Banerjee reached the state Assembly at around 1.45 pm and paid floral tributes to BR Ambedkar. After the oath-taking ceremony, the Governor and the Chief Minister went to Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay's office. The Governor was in the Speaker's office for around half-an-hour. While leaving the Speaker's office, the Governor was heard saying that it was a "historic moment".

Senior party leaders, ministers and MLAs, including state Panchayats minister Subrata Mukherjee, Trinamool Congress secretary general and state Parliamentary Affairs minister Partha Chatterjee, state Transport minister Firhad Hakim, state Fire minister Sujit Bose and MLA from Krishnanagar Uttar Mukul Roy were also present in the oath-taking ceremony.

In connection with the absence of BJP MLAs in the programme, Chatterjee, taking a dig at the saffron party, said: "They can fight in the election, but cannot remain present in the state Assembly. This is nothing but an insult to the House."