Trinamool Congress leader Babul Supriyo on Wednesday took oath as the West Bengal Assembly MLA more than three weeks after he won the bye-election from the Ballygunge constituency in Kolkata.

West Bengal Deputy Speaker Ashish Banerjee administered the oath to Supriyo, instead of Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.

On April 30, Dhankhar had asked Banerjee to administer the oath to Supriyo, citing Article 188 of the Constitution. The provision states that new members of legislative assemblies must take the oath “before the Governor, or some person appointed in that behalf by him”.

Earlier, Dhankhar had objected to a letter written by Supriyo to the West Bengal Assembly speaker, asking him to administer the oath. Dhankhar said that the speaker had no authority in the matter unless the governor were to assign the responsibility to him.

A press release issued by the West Bengal Raj Bhavan on May 1, said that Supriyo should have known that the speaker lacked authority on the matter, considering his “enormous experience as Union minister and Parliamentarian”.

Supriyo had received the election certificate on April 16, and had become an MLA from that time, the governor added. He said that nothing stopped him from serving the people of Ballygunge as an MLA.

“The oath is required to be taken before taking his seat in the Assembly, which is not in session, at least since the issuance of the certificate of election,” the press release had read.

On April 16, Supriyo won the Ballygunge bye-election by defeating Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate Saira Shah Halim by more than 20,000 votes.

Supriyo, who won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 General Elections on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket, had said in July that he would quit active politics after he was dropped as a Union minister from Narendra Modi’s Cabinet.

Supriyo joined the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal on September 18, six months after the party won the Assembly election in the state against the BJP.