Atal Bihari Vajpayee

NEW DELHI : A new look Lok Sabha, the lower of the Indian parliament, began here on June 2 with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee now in the opposition ranks and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi occupying the treasury benches.

On the first day of a brief nine-day session, members of Parliament, or MPs, took their oath. Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi and former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani were among the first few leaders to read the oath of affirmation. Manmohan Singh did not take oath as he is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. As leader of the house, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee started the oath taking rituals, doing so for the first time as he won a Lok Sabha election for the first time.

Vajpayee, who returned to the opposition benches after six years, elicited hearty desk thumping from across the house as he walked to read out his oath, just after Advani.

The new Lok Sabha begins its tenure after a tumultuous election that produced an unexpected verdict, toppling the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance and bringing the Congress Party back to power at the helm of a coalition. His tenure was cut short by a defeat that Vajpayee attributed to his party’s “overconfidence.”