Kolkata: West Bengal Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee wrote to President Droupadi Murmu seeking her intervention to resolve the impasse concerning the oath-taking ceremony of two newly elected TMC MLAs.
"I have written to the President and sought her intervention into the matter so that she can speak to the Governor and end this impasse. What is happening regarding the swearing in of the MLAs is unacceptable. We hope to get justice," he said.
The controversy over the venue for the swearing in ceremony of the two MLAs escalated when the legislators refused to take oath at Raj Bhavan as directed by Governor CV Ananda Bose and instead staged a dharna at the assembly complex.
Baranagar MLA Sayantika Bandyopadhyay and Bhagabangola MLA Rayat Hossain Sarkar sat on the dharna before the BR Ambedkar statue in the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha complex. They demanded that Bose enable them to perform their duties as legislators by facilitating the oath-taking ceremony in the assembly.
The governor had invited the two MLAs, who were elected in the recent bypolls, to take the oath in the Raj Bhavan. However, they declined the invitation, claiming that convention dictates that in the case of bypoll winners, the governor assigns the speaker or the deputy speaker to administer the oath.
