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Jaitley leader of house, Azad opposition leader in RS

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IANS New Delhi

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will be Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha while Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad will be Leader of Opposition, Chairman M. Hamid Ansari said Monday.

Jaitley, who was formerly Leader of Opposition in the upper house, also has the additional charge of the defence ministry.

Azad, who lost the Lok Sabha polls from Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir, was the health minister in the previous Congress-led government.

Former commerce minister Anand Sharma was made deputy leader of the Congress party.

The Congress, with 67 members in the 245-member upper house, has the requisite numbers to be the main opposition party.

 

Ansari also administered the oath to 25 new members, including Digvijaya Singh and Kumari Selja of the Congress, Vijay Goel of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and actor-turned-politician Mithun Chakraborty, of the Trinamool Congress.

The chairman also introduced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the house.

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First Published: Jun 09 2014 | 5:28 PM IST

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