Citing protocol breach Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh left the swearing-in ceremony of Governor SC Jamir midway.
The Leader of Opposition also raised the issue in the Assembly and demanded that the State Government should apologise. The Governor is the constitutional head of the State and also summons the Assembly, but the MLAs do not have a place to seat in his swearing-in ceremony, he said.
Singh said the Speaker could also have announced the swearing-in in the House which he did not. Alleging that the Government does not know what is protocol, he said during the reception of the Governor at the airport only three MLAs from Bhubaneswar were present. “Today also only three MLAs from Bhubaneswar city were present,” he said.
One of the BJD legislators from Bhubaneswar Bhagirathi Badajena, however, claimed that all the three MLAs from the city had received proper invitations. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kalpataru Das said that the swearing-in ceremony was conducted at the Abhisek hall of Raj Bhavan which has a sitting capacity of 90. After Cabinet ministers and former chief ministers, the Leader of Opposition was given a seat in the next row, he said.
All MLAs could not be invited to the ceremony as 25 seats were reserved for journalists, he said and added, “this is the practice”.