Chandigarh, March 17 (IANS) The newly constituted legislative assembly, whose three-day session began here on Thursday, was different as most of the security guards did not recognise a few new faces who arrived for the session.
The first of the session commenced with Pro-tem Speaker Inderbir Singh Nijjar administering the oath of office and secrecy to Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann as Member of the Vidhan Sabha.
Breaking the convention, all women members were administered oath after the Chief Minister.
Thereafter, all other members were sworn in by the Speaker as members of the newly constituted Assembly district-wise in an alphabetical order.
The Chief Minister announced an anti-corruption helpline.
A day after resigning from the post of Punjab Congress chief, Navjot Singh Sidhu, who faced defeat from his stronghold Amritsar (East), supported Mann's crusade against corruption.
"The happiest man is the one from whom no one expects. Bhagwant Mann unfurls a new anti-mafia era in Punjab with a mountain of expectations, hope he rises to the occasion, brings back Punjab on the revival path with pro-people policies, best always," Sidhu said in a tweet.
Rising from the ashes like the phoenix, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) last week, in a maiden emphatic win, crushed the traditional players that ruled the border state of Punjab for over seven decades with its stunning victory largely by its greenhorns on 92 of the 117 seats of the legislative assembly.
The previous ruling Congress, which won 77 seats in 2017, managed to win only 18 seats with most of its stalwarts like Chief Minister Charanjit Channi and state party chief Sidhu facing humiliating defeat from their respective strongholds.
The Congress frontal organizations -- NSUI, Youth Congress and Mahila Congress staged protests on Monday against suspension of Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account.
Madhya Pradesh BJP in-charge, P. Murlidhar Rao told IANS that a centralised monitoring system will be set up at the state level to keep real-time monitoring of anti-party comments or statements of state leaders and office bearers at different levels of the organisation.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Kulgam Kisan Morcha President and his wife were shot dead by suspected terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district on Monday, sources said.
Director General of Police, Punjab, Dinkar Gupta said that following inputs regarding drone activity in the area, a massive combing operation was launched.
State NCP President and Water Resources Minister Jayant Patil, Mumbai party President and Minister Nawab Malik and others visited the martyrs' memorial at the August Kranti Maidan in south Mumbai and paid homage to those who sacrificed their lives for the country's Independence.
He was the prime mover behind the letter written to interim party chief Sonia Gandhi calling for wide-ranging reforms and is also seen one of the leaders who has serious differences with the working of Rahul Gandhi.
