Seating arrangements in the Central Hall of the Parliament for the oath-taking ceremony of Droupadi Murmu as President of India on July 25 caused a row with the Opposition alleging that the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, had not been accorded respect in being given a third row seat.
Hitting back, Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, Piyush Goyal, accused the Congress of misleading the public with a “baseless” allegation on the seating arrangement.
After the oath-taking ceremony, several Opposition members wrote to Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu, claiming that Mr. Kharge was not accorded a seat commensurate with his position during Ms. Murmu’s swearing-in ceremony.
“We are writing to express our shock and protest at this deliberate disrespect shown to a very senior leader violating the warrant of precedence and not in accordance with the protocol courtesies due to him,” Opposition leaders, including from the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) wrote in their letter.
Congress chief whip in the Rajya Sabha, Jairam Ramesh, put out the letter on his Twitter handle.
His colleague and the party’s leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, wrote a similar letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Responding to Mr. Ramesh’s tweet, Mr. Goyal raised the issue on the floor of the House when the Rajya Sabha reassembled at 3 p.m. He said that, on July 23, during a function of the House to bid farewell to former President Ramnath Kovind, Mr. Kharge was assigned a seat in the front row with the Prime Minister but he did not come for the event and his seat was left vacant.
Also read: Address by Droupadi Murmu on her assumption of office as President of India
“As per the order of precedence of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Leader of Opposition’s position is seventh. As per this order, his place is in the third row, but we were happy to see that he was assigned a place in the first row during the event in the morning. But when he expressed his displeasure at being given a corner seat, a staff requested him to come to the centre but he refused. This is the Opposition’s mentality to disrupt the House and is a false allegation,” Mr. Goyal said.
Referring to the farewell function of President Kovind on July 23, Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi said, ”It was an insult to the President also. Today, they are making an issue of a non-issue. In spite of order of precedence, we tried to accommodate them in first row. Majority of Cabinet ministers sat in second row.”
