Lok Sabha to begin work next week with 5-day session

NEW DELHI: The 17th Lok Sabha will begin work next week with a five-day session. After the extravagant swearing-in ceremony of the Council of Ministers at Rashtrapati Bhawan on Thursday evening, the focus would now be kickstarting the next process. The focus would now shift to Parliament.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would call a meeting of Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, which would decide on the date of the first session of Lok Sabha. This would be conveyed to Lok Sabha Secretariat, which would begin preparations for two days of oath and affirmation by members of Parliament (MPs). In the 16th Lok Sabha, the first session had six sittings between June 4 and 11.

The Prime Minister would decide on the name of a temporary Speaker – or pro-tem Speaker – who administers the oath to newly-elected MPs. Lok Sabha secretariat has prepared a list of names of the senior-most members of Parliament. A senior official said, “We are going by set procedures. The term is calculated as the total number of years served as an MP in Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. Usually the senior most member is chosen by Prime Minister to oversee the oath.”