Speaker Biman Banerjee rebuked two newly elected Trinamool Congress MLAs, Sangita Roy and Jayprakash Toppo, for their late arrival at the Assembly on Tuesday, a day after they were sworn in by governor C.V. Ananda Bose.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had on Monday expressed dissatisfaction with the low attendance rate of the ruling party’s MLAs in the House. Her displeasure came during a Trinamool legislature party meeting she chaired at the Assembly.

At 11.27am, about halfway through the Question Hour, Sitai MLA Roy and Madarihat MLA Toppo entered the House holding a piece of paper each and began searching for their seats. They are among the six new Trinamool MLAs elected in the November 13 by-polls.

Roy and Toppo — assigned seats 181 and 107, respectively — approached members of the Treasury benches for assistance, before an Assembly staff member guided them to their designated places.

The Speaker, visibly irritated, said: “Newly elected MLAs should arrive before 11am. It is inappropriate, searching for seats while the session is in progress.”

On Monday, Mamata told her MLAs that several previous warnings from her seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

“She said she keeps stressing the need for regularity and sincerity in their attendance when the House is in session, instructing them to put in the kind of work and seriousness they did in school or college life. This has been happening session after session, but not many seem to listen,” said a source in the TMC.

“During divisions (voting) in the House on many recent occasions, the results were something like 110-45 or 130-60, although Trinamool has 220-plus members (226 now) in the 294-seat Assembly. That is utterly unacceptable,” he added.

Last year, Mamata had formed a disciplinary committee headed by parliamentary affairs minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, to specifically look into such matters. Last week, that committee was reconstituted, with Chattopadhyay still heading it.

Last winter, he had tried implementing the signing of attendance registers in his presence (for ministers) and government Chief Whip Nirmal Ghosh (for other MLAs), but it met with considerable resistance from seniors — with some expressing their displeasure in public.

A weekly attendance report was to be sent to Mamata, to ensure greater accountability, but that exercise too had been shelved.

“Now, there is likely to be some consequences for these things,” said a Trinamool leader, underscoring Mamata’s announcement that any MLA who misses three consecutive days of an ongoing session would receive a show-cause on the fourth day.

Mamata also instructed power minister Aroop Biswas to create a WhatsApp group for Trinamool MLAs that would serve as a platform for her to communicate with them, through him.