All the INDIA parties stayed away from Sunday’s swearing-in of the third Narendra Modi government, with Mallikarjun Kharge alone registering his presence in deference to his "constitutional duty" as leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

The INDIA bloc cited no specific reason for skipping the event but Kharge let it slip, while talking to reporters on his way to Rashtrapati Bhavan, that the Modi government had always humiliated the Opposition.

"I am going for the swearing-in ceremony because I have a constitutional duty as leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. I am going in that capacity," he said.

Asked about some of the parties staying away because they had not been invited, Kharge said: "Everyone knows what the government’s behaviour is like. They have been humiliating the Opposition from before."

The Opposition parties that received invitations to the ceremony did so as late as Sunday afternoon, by when most of them had already consulted each other and decided to stay away.

At the same time, they were careful not to use the word "boycott" for their collective decision.

The Trinamool Congress had been among the earliest to announce that it would not attend the ceremony, making this known on Saturday.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said she had not received an invite while maintaining that Trinamool would not attend the event even if invited as the government was being formed "undemocratically and unconstitutionally".

D. Raja of the CPI echoed similar sentiments, maintaining that the verdict of the general election was against the BJP.

"We are not attending," he said, adding that this had nothing to do with whether or not the party had received an invitation.

Some Opposition leaders underlined that the invites to the INDIA parties had come as an afterthought after Congress leaders told the media that they had not received an invitation till then.

Responding to the question, Congress media-in-charge Jairam Ramesh had quipped that foreign leaders had been invited but not the Opposition parties of the country.