PM: Forget paksh, vipaksh, nishpaksh spirit important

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged all Opposition parties to come together and work for the larger interest of the country. He said, "More than paksh (ruling party), vipaksh (Opposition), nishpaksh (unbiased) spirit is important. We will all try to maintain the dignity of Parliament."

The Prime Minister also stressed on the need of an active Opposition without thinking of their numbers in the House.

"The role of an active Opposition is important. Opposition need not bother about their numbers. I hope they will speak actively and participate in house proceedings," he said. Modi said that "every word of Opposition was valuable".

Modi said it is after several decades that a government has won an absolute majority for the second term. "People have given us the chance to serve the country again. I request all the parties to support the decisions that are in favour of the people," he said.

He said smooth functioning of Parliament results in fulfilment of the aspirations of the common people. "I am happy that this new House has a high number of women members in Parliament," the PM said.

He assured that this session of Parliament would be more fruitful as compared to the previous ones. The Prime Minister, who is also the leader of the House, took oath as a Member of Parliament in the 17th Lok Sabha on Monday.

After the PM, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Home Minister Amit Shah also took oath as Lok Sabha members. When Modi's name was called out for taking oath, members from the ruling NDA thumped the desks greeting him with slogans such as "Modi Modi" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai".

The panel of presiding officers - K Suresh, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh and B Mehtab - took oath as Members after the Prime Minister. While the Prime Minister and most of Union Ministers took oath in Hindi, Union Ministers Harsh Vardhan, Sripad Naik, Ashwini Chaubey and Pratap Chandra Sarangi took oath in Sanskrit.

While D V Sadananda Gowda and Prahlad Joshi took oath in Kannada, Harsimrat Kaur Badal took oath in Punjabi.

Union Ministers Arvind Ganpat Sawant, Raosaheb Patil Danbe took oath in Marathi, Jitendra Singh in Dogri, Babul Supriyo in English, Rameshwar Teli in Assamese, G Kishan Reddy in Telugu and Debashree Choudhury in Bangla. BJD leader Mehtab took oath in Odiya.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi reached Parliament around 4 pm and took oath in the next half an hour. Rahul took the oath in English.

Minutes before taking oath, he tweeted that his fourth consecutive term as a member of the Lok Sabha begins on June 17. "Representing Wayanad, Kerala, I begin my new innings", he tweeted.