Seat No 300 in the Bengal Assembly had been reserved for the Bhabanipur MLA for the past 15 years. It remained the same on Wednesday.
Around 11am on Wednesday, Suvendu Adhikari sat in the hot seat as the first BJP chief minister, replacing his predecessor, Mamata Banerjee, and took the oath of affirmation as the Bhabanipur MLA.
Suvendu, who was elected from Bhabanipur defeating Mamata, said he would not allow the people of Nandigram to feel that he was no longer their official MLA.
Apart from Bhabanipur, he had also been elected from Nandigram.
“Seat No. 300 is always for the chief minister. Today, we saw Suvendu Babu, who had sat in the first row of the Opposition bench in the past five years, occupy it. The change was really visible,” said a senior employee of the Assembly.
Wednesday was the first day of Suvendu as chief minister in the Assembly, as he took the oath of affirmation on the floor of the House.
“After the government was formed under the leadership of (Narendra) Modi ji, we entered the Assembly for the first time today. This House will frame laws, and the government will be responsible to this Assembly. You will see a reflection of the Constitution’s line — ‘for the people, by the people and of the people’ — on the floor of this House,” Suvendu told reporters.
Before the chief minister reached the Assembly, BJP MLAs, who were scheduled to take the oath of affirmation on Wednesday, started entering the House, mostly through the gates that they had earlier used as Opposition members. Shankar Ghosh, the BJP MLA from Siliguri, was on the floor managing his new colleagues and showing them their seats across the treasury benches.
A total of 156 MLAs, including the chief minister and five other cabinet ministers — Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul, Ashok Kirtaniya, Kshudiram Tudu and Nishith Pramanik — took oath as MLAs, while pro-tem speaker and Maniktala MLA Tapas Roy presided over the ceremony.
MLAs of the Trinamool Congress, Congress and the lone CPM lawmaker also took oath on Wednesday in two sessions.
“The remaining 137 MLAs will take oath on Thursday. The Speaker will be elected on Friday when the first session will begin,” an official said.
Suvendu first offered floral tributes to the statue of B.R. Ambedkar. After receiving a guard of honour on the Assembly premises, Adhikari bowed down on his knees at the main entrance to the Assembly as a mark of respect. He also offered a puja inside his office before entering the floor of the House and taking the chief minister’s seat.
When Narendra Modi had reached Parliament for the first time in 2014, he had prostrated at the entrance to the House.
“It was a pleasure to see our chief minister in that seat. We dreamt of forming a government of our party, which was built by Syama Prasad Mookerjee. In the land of Syama Prasad, it was a matter of great pride to see the chief minister representing him,” said Ashok Kirtaniya, the food and supplies minister.
Kirtaniya said that when he entered the Assembly, he noticed some Trinamool legislators, who had earlier tried to suppress his voice while he was in the Opposition.
“Many of those MLAs, who once tried to silence our voices, were elected again. I saw them on the floor, met them personally and shook hands with them. The Assembly is a place where both the ruling party and the Opposition have their own voices. However, that disappeared during the earlier regime,” he added.
Suvendu exchanged greetings with several Trinamool MLAs, who came to take the oath, as the microphone was placed beside the chief minister’s seat. He spoke to Opposition MLAs, including veteran Trinamool legislator Samar Mukherjee, who greeted him. The chief minister stood up from his seat after the MLA from Ratua in Malda, Samar Mukherjee, took the oath.
The lone CPM MLA from Domkal, Mostafijur Rahaman, also greeted Suvendu. Rahaman said he had been asked to fight strongly on the floor of the House as a young MLA.
Asked about the courtesy shown by the Opposition MLAs, Suvendu said he would not disclose what they had privately told him.
“But I can say that many of them told me one thing — that they got freedom (from Trinamool) from today,” said the chief minister.
The chief minister’s first day was colourful, as his chamber was decorated with yellow and saffron marigold flowers.
Though there was no politics on the floor of the Assembly on the first day of the oath-taking ceremony, around 12.30pm, pro-tem speaker Tapas Roy suddenly announced that lunch had been arranged for all MLAs — machh-bhaat (fish and rice) — probably to send an indirect message countering Trinamool’s narrative during the election campaign that the BJP would ban fish if it came to power.