Ministers Ambika Soni, Anand Sharma take oath as Rajya Sabha members

Union ministers Ambika Soni and Anand Sharma were among the 52 members who took oath today in the Rajya Sabha on the first day of the monsoon session of the Parliament.

Lok Janshakti party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, Samajwadi Party spokesperson Mohan Singh and industrialist Vijay Mallya, were among those took oath as members of the Upper House.

Information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni and commerce and industries minister Anand Sharma, along with BJP leaders M Venkaiah Naidu, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BSP leader Satish Chandra Mishra and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani have been re-elected.

Veteran Congress leaders like V Hanumantha Rao, Mohsina Kidwai, N Janaradhana Reddy and Satish Sharma have also been re-elected.

Environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh, however, was not present in the house to take oath. Nand Kumar Sai of the BJP was also not present when their names were called.

Rudy, who had once taken oath in Bhojpuri, was asked to take oath again, as the dialect is not included in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution. The former civil aviation minister ultimately took oath in Hindi.

Newly elected BJP member from Rajasthan VP Singh, before taking oath, requested chairman Hamid Ansari to include Rajasthani in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.

Singh, as also Anil Madhav Dave and Tarun Vijay (both BJP), took oath in Sanskrit.

Congress member Vijay Darda wore a kurta with Mahatma Gandhi's sketch inscribed on the back and 'Satyamev Jayate' printed on the front.

A maximum of 12 members took oath from Uttar Pradesh, followed by six from Maharashtra, five each from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, four from Tamil Nadu, three each from Karnataka, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, two each from Jharkhand and Punjab, and one each from Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.