New Delhi, June 25 (IANS) Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan administered the oath and secrecy to ten newly elected members of the Upper House on Thursday.

The newly elected MPs, who took the oath as Rajya Sabha members, included four from Andhra Pradesh — three of whom came from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and one from Jana Sena Party (JSP), both constituents of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

From Andhra Pradesh, Sana Satish Babu, Vijay Chintakayala and Bhashyam Rama Krishna were elected unopposed from the TDP while JSP’s Lingamaneni Ramesh was elected opposed during the recent Rajya Sabha elections for 24 seats, spared across 10 states.

Among the other lawmakers who took oath in the Upper House included Tai Tagak (Bharatiya Janata Party) from Arunachal Pradesh, Rajesh Parmanad Shukla (Bharatiya Janata Party) from Gujarat, Baidyanath Ram (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) from Jharkhand, Debashish Samantaray (Bharatiya Janata Party) from Odisha and Praveen Chakravarty (Congress) from Tamil Nadu.

Parimal Nathwani, who won as Independent from Jharkhand, was also administered oath of office by Vice-President Radhakrishnan.

With the completion of swearing-in, these members formally assume their Rajya Sabha membership and are now eligible to participate in the proceedings of the House.

A notable feature of the oath ceremony was the country’s linguistic diversity at display — five of the ten members took the oath in Hindi, one in English, one in Tamil, and three in Telugu.

Union Minister of State for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal, Rajya Sabha Secretary-General P.C. Mody, several members of the House, and senior officials of Rajya Sabha Secretariat attended the ceremony.

The elections for 26 Rajya Sabha seats spanning across 10 states, were held on June 18.

Elections were held in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat (four seats each), Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (three each), Jharkhand (two seats), Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal and Mizoram (one each).

Out of all these, BJP-led NDA grabbed the lion’s share by winning 19 seats while the INDIA bloc had secured victory on six seats.

–IANS

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