The winter session of Parliament was adjourned on the opening day after condolences were offered for the demise of former Union Minister and Rajya Sabha MP Murli Deora.
Deora, 77, was suffering from cancer and passed away early on Monday morning at around 3:25 am. He was a veteran Congress leader and is survived by his wife and two sons including former MP Milind Deora, PTI reported.
Congress party workers will pay their last respects to Deora at the Mumbai Congress office between 12 pm and 2 pm, after which the family will conduct the funeral rites at the Chandanwadi Crematorium.
The veteran leader was a Gandhi family loyalist and a close confidant of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He began his political career with the Mumbai Municipal Corporation in 1968 and contested his first civic elections in Mumbai in 1975.
An economics graduate, Deora became the Mayor of Mumbai in 1977 and served for a year in that post. He was elected to the Lok Sabha four times from Mumbai South. Later, during the UPA rule, he served as the Petroleum and Corporate Affairs Minister and was currently a Rajya Sabha MP.
In the wake of Deora's demise early in the morning, the Parliament was adjourned for the day after both the houses condoled the death of the Congress leader.
The winter session began with the oath-taking of the new Members of Parliament in the presence of Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Rajya Sabha speaker Mohammad Hamid Ansari.
Later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the newly elected cabinet members to the Parliamentary House and asked all the parties to work unitedly.
"We all friends who sit in Parliament will work together - that's my belief. A new session starts, we have to work with a calm mind in the cold climate," NDTV quoted Modi as saying. The session on the first day lasted for around 30 minutes.
The second session of Parliament will begin tomorrow and BJP-led NDA government will table Bills for approval. However, some opposition parties have decided to make it hard for BJP to move any key legislation in this session.
"This session will witness a lot of hungama (chaos)," Janata Dal (United) lawmaker KC Tyagi had said after the all-party meeting on Tuesday.
