<\/p>\n
India\u2019s newly elected lawmakers took the oath of office on Tuesday, but without two vocal government critics unable to take their seats because they are jailed on national security charges.<\/p>\n
One is the Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh<\/a>, a firebrand preacher arrested last year after a month-long police manhunt in Punjab state.<\/p>\n The other is Sheikh Abdul Rashid<\/a>, a former state legislator in Indian-occupied Kashmir, known popularly as Engineer Rashid.<\/p>\n Rashid, arrested on charges of \u201cterror funding\u201d and money laundering in 2019, is awaiting his latest bail hearing on July 1, his lawyer Ubaid Shams told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n The family of Singh, an advocate of the banned Khalistan movement for an independent Sikh homeland \u2014 the struggle for which sparked deadly violence in the 1980s and 1990s \u2014 said they had no news on whether he could take the oath.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know whether he will come out of jail or not\u201d, his father Tarsem Singh told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are at our village, and haven\u2019t heard anything from the government,\u201d he said from his home in rural Punjab.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what the authorities are thinking about his release.\u201d Rashid\u2019s name was called out in parliament on Monday when lawmakers began taking their oaths, with Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi the first to take the stand.<\/p>\n Modi, 73, on Monday appealed to an emboldened opposition for \u201cconsensus\u201d following an election setback that forced him into a coalition government for the first time in a decade.<\/p>\n Modi\u2019s chief rival Rahul Gandhi was appointed on Tuesday to lead India\u2019s opposition in parliament, a key post that has been vacant for a decade.<\/p>\n Congress party general secretary K C Venugopal said Gandhi would be \u201ca bold voice for the common people of India\u201d and ensure the government \u201cis held firmly accountable at all times\u201d, he told reporters in a statement.<\/p>\n Venugopal said Congress party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Rahul\u2019s mother, had written to the parliament temporary speaker informing him he \u201cis appointed as the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha\u201d, India\u2019s lower house.<\/p>\n The post has been vacant for 10 years because two dismal election results for Congress \u2014 once India\u2019s dominant party \u2014 left it short of that threshold.<\/p>\n Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ruled outright for the past decade but failed to repeat its previous two landslide wins this time, despite widespread expectations of another easy triumph.<\/p>\n \u201cTo protect the Constitution is the duty of every patriotic Indian,\u201d he said shortly after in a statement after taking oath.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will fulfil this duty in full measure.\u201d<\/p>\n Gandhi is one of several top opposition figures to face criminal proceedings in cases they claim are politically driven by Modi\u2019s government.<\/p>\n He was sentenced to two years imprisonment last year<\/a> in 2023 in a separate case in Gujarat but was not jailed after appealing to India\u2019s top court.<\/p>\n The sentence did, however, force his brief disqualification<\/a> from parliament until the Supreme Court suspended<\/a> his conviction.<\/p>\n Gandhi, 54, is the scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades and is the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India\u2019s newly elected lawmakers took the oath of office on Tuesday, but without two vocal government critics unable to take their seats because they are jailed on national security charges. One is the Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh, a firebrand preacher arrested last year after a month-long police manhunt in Punjab state. The other is Sheikh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/06\/251540345baacff.jpg?r=154246","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Gandhi appointed as parliamentary leader of opposition: party secretary<\/h2>\n