Month-long impasse ends as Speaker administers oath to Trinamool MPs

Kolkata: A month-long stalemate between the Raj Bhavan and the state Assembly over the oath-taking of two newly elected Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLAs—Rayat Hossain Sarkar from Bhagwangola in Murshidabad and Sayantika Banerjee from Baranagar—ended on Friday as Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee administered their oaths.

In a parallel development later in the day, Governor C V Ananda Bose wrote to President Droupadi Murmu, dubbing that the Assembly Speaker administering oaths to two newly elected TMC MLAs was a “violation of the Constitution”, a Raj Bhavan official said. Governor on Thursday had appointed Deputy Speaker Asish Banerjee to administer oaths of the two MLAs. The Deputy Speaker, however, refused to administer the oath as it would insult the chair of the Speaker as the latter was present in the Assembly. During a Business Advisory Committee meeting before the Assembly session on Friday, the Speaker had a talk with the Deputy Speaker, following which he agreed to administer the oath. But when the session began, the Deputy Speaker said the Speaker should administer the oath as he was present. Eventually, violating the Governor’s directive, the Speaker administered the oath to the two MLAs.

The face-off between the TMC government and Governor Bose over the swearing-in ceremony began in the second week of June after the Governor asked the two MLAs to come to the Raj Bhavan for the oath-taking ceremony and they refused to go to Raj Bhavan. Speaker Biman Banerjee on Thursday called for a special session of the state Assembly saying that the House’s functions are not solely dependent on the Governor. The two newly elected Trinamool Congress MLAs staged a sit-in protest at the Assembly premises for the sixth day till Thursday.