The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha began today with newly elected MPs taking oath as members of the House.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the leader of the Lok Sabha, was the first to take oath as a member of the House. Pro-tem Speaker Bhartruhari Mahtab administered the oath to Mr. Modi. This was followed by the oath of the panel of chairpersons appointed to assist Mr. Mahtab in running the proceedings of the Lok Sabha till the election of the Speaker.

BJP MPs Radha Mohan Singh and Faggan Singh Kulaste took oaths as the members of the chairperson panel. However, Congress MP K Suresh, DMK MP TR Balu and Sudip Bandyopadhyay of TMC skipped oath-taking proceedings as the members of the panel.

Later, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Manohar Lal, Piyush Goyal, Jitanram Manjhi, Rajiv Ranjan alias Lallan Singh, Dr Virendra Kumar, Kiren Rijiju, Chirag Paswan, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Annapurna Devi, and others took oath as the members of the Lok Sabha.

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Union Ministers  HD Kumaraswamy and Pralhad Joshi took oath in Kannada while Dharmendra Pradhan and  Jual Oram took oath in Odia language. Another Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal took oath in Assamese, and Union Ministers K Ram Mohan Naidu and G Kishan Reddy took oath in Telugu.

Union Minister C R Patil took oath in Gujarati. Union Minister Prataprao Jadhav administered the oath in Marathi while Dr. Jitendra Singh in Dogri. Union Minister Suresh Gopi took oath in Malayalam while another Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar took oath in Bengali. Union Minister Durgadas Uikey took oath in Sanskrit.

Following the oath taken by the  Union Ministers as members of the House,  other  MPs are taking oaths as per the alphabetical order of States and Union Territories.

The newly elected MPs from Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh were administered oaths. From Assam, Gaurav Gogoi and Rakibul Hussain of Congress and Bijuli Kalita Medhi of BJP were among the prominent faces who took oaths.

From Bihar, Members of Parliament who took oath include Lovely Anand and Devesh Chandra Thakur of JDU, and Janardan Singh Sigriwal, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Ravi Shankar Prasad of BJP as well as Misa Bharti of RJD and Tariq Anwar of Congress.

Congress MP Manish Tewari, who has been elected from Chandigarh has also taken oath as a member of the Lok Sabha. The oath and affirmation of newly elected Lok Sabha members is underway.

Our correspondent reports that as the 18th Lok Sabha convened for the first time, a remarkable display of India’s diverse multi-lingual and ethnic traditions was witnessed in the Parliament.

Besides Hindi and English, several MPs took oath in regional languages, including Telugu, Assamese, Bangla, Malayalam, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Kannada, Odia, Dogri and others.

Some MPs were also seen wearing their traditional attire of the region. The Parliament premises also witnessed joy and excitement among the MPs as well as bonhomie between the treasury bench and opposition MPs as they were seen greeting each other.

Before the Lok Sabha assembled, MPs across party lines were seen clicking photographs and greeting each other warmly. TDP MP from Vijayanagaram, A Kalisetti reached Parliament on bicycle. MPs from Congress, Samajwadi Party, TMC, DMK and others entered the Lok Sabha carrying copies of the constitution.