Kashmir leader Abdul Rashid Sheikh and radical preacher Amritpal Singh, the two newly elected Independent MPs who fought and won the polls from prison, took oath as Lok Sabha MPs on Friday amid heavy security in and around the Parliament complex.
The court had granted them custody parole to take oath.
While Singh was brought to Delhi in police custody from a prison in Assam, Engineer Rashid was brought from Delhi's Tihar jail. They took oath in the chamber of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Singh, 31, won the Lok Sabha polls from Punjab's Khadoor Sahib seat defeating the Congress nominee by nearly 2 lakh votes. Singh, a Khalistani sympathiser who heads the radical outfit Waris Punjab De, was arrested last year in Punjab after he barged into a police station and clashed with the personnel in a bid to release one of his associates in custody. Booked under the National Security Act, he was later shifted to a jail in Assam's Dibrugarh.
Rashid, 56, won from the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat, defeating former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah by a margin of over 2 lakh votes. Rashid has been in jail since 2019 in a case related to terror funding under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The two were granted custody parole for the oath with strict conditions, prohibiting them and their family members from making any statement or speaking to the media. Singh was granted a four-day custody parole while Rashid got just two hours' relief.
No pictures of the oath were put out because of security reasons. Apart from the two, the third MP-elect who took oath in the Speaker's chamber was SP legislator from Ghazipur Afzal Ansari.
With the oaths of the two jailed MPs, a total of 541 newly elected members have been sworn in. The only MP-elect who hasn’t taken oath yet is Trinamool Congress's actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, re-elected from Bengal's Asansol seat. Trinamool sources said he was occupied with the wedding of his actor daughter Sonakshi Sinha and has not been able to make it to the oath ceremony yet.
Of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, Wayanad lies vacant after Rahul Gandhi chose to retain Rae Bareli out of the two constituencies he had contested and won. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest the Wayanad seat.
