As the 15th Lok Sabha launched its first session today,prominent faces of the previous House Sonia Gandhi,Pranab Mukherjee and L K Advani were ensconced in their old seats with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too in the same place. The occupants of the rest of the seats had,however,changed. With its numbers up,the Congress swamped the second block,pushing its allies to the third. Rahul Gandhi stayed put at a rear bench but that did not deter Congress members from trying to get closer to him. Lalu Prasad Yadav,a leading light of the last government,sat away from the Congress,with his new friend Mulayam Singh Yadav. His flock routed and ousted,Lalu was no longer his usual vocal self. As if to console him after keeping him out of the new dispensation,Sonia thumped the desk with extra enthusiasm when he stood up to take oath. Taking the cue,Congress members cheered him loudly,but it failed to lift Lalu's spirits. Mulayam Singh,his SP contingent reduced to nearly half,looked forlorn. Their third partner,Ram Vilas Paswan,was missing,having been defeated in the polls. Ram Sunder Das,89,of the JD(U),who had defeated the LJP chief,sat behind party president Sharad Yadav,basking in the glory of success in Bihar. If anyone matched Mulayams wry smiles while shaking hands with new members,it was Basudeb Acharia. The bulk of his CPI(M) contingent defeated in the polls,Acharia seemed to have lost track of his scattered new brood. The language of the oath became a political statement. If it was chaste Hindi for Sonia Gandhi,Sushma Swaraj opted for Sanskrit. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal chose Punjabi,prompting Swaraj to ask him later if this indicated an impending merger of Chandigarh (his seat) with Punjab. Farooq Abdullah (National Conference) invoked Allah,as did Shanawaz Hussain of BJP,Sultan Ahmed of Trinamool Congress,Badruddin Ajmal (Assam United Democratic Front) and Mohamamed Asrarul Haque (Congress). Salman Khursheed (Congress) chose to solemnly affirm in chaste Hindi.
