17th Lok Sabha begins: Parliament witnesses linguistic diversity as lawmakers take oath in mother tongue

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani and other newly elected MPs took oath as Lok Sabha members on first day of the budget session in Parliament.

The oath-taking session will continue on Tuesday as several members are yet to take oath. While Prime Minister and most of the Union Ministers took oath in Hindi, many lawmakers took their oath in their mother tongue as 17th Lok Sabha commenced on Monday. 

DV Sadananda Gowda and Prahlad Joshi, BJP MP's from Karnataka took oath in Kannada.

SAD MP and Union Minister Harsimran Kaur Badal took oath in Punjabi.

Union Ministers Arvind Ganpat Sawant, Raosaheb Patil Danbe took oath in Marathi.

Jitendra Singh, BJP MP from Udhampur took his oath in his native language Dogri.

Lawmakers from the southern states took their oath in their mother tongue, like most of the YSR Congress Party MPs in Telegu. Many members from Assam took oath in Assamese.

BJP members from Bihar Gopal jee Thakur and Ashok Kumar Yadav took oath in Maithili.

BJP MP from Bihar Janardan Singh Sigriwal wanted to take oath in Bhojpuri but he was not allowed to do it because the language was not in the eighth schedule of the constitution.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi and BJP lawmaker from Bengal Babul Supriyo took their oath in English. He won the Lok Sabha election from Wayanad in Kerela.

Rahul Gandhi had also contested from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh but was defeated by BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani by a margin of over 55,000 votes.

Rameshwar Teli, BJP MP from Dibrugarh took his oath in Assamese and Debashree Choudhury took his oath in Bangla.

BJP MP from Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur took her oath in Sanskrit. The incident was mired in controversy when Thakur suffixed the name of her spiritual guru while taking her oath while drawing Opposition's ire.

The mention of Swami Purna Chetnanand Avdheshanand Giri as a suffix to her name Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur evoked a sharp reaction from the Opposition members who said that such a thing was not permitted.

She insisted that the suffix was part of her full name, resulting in an uproar from opposition and slogan shouting in her favour from the ruling benches.

(With PTI inputs)