Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury administered the oath at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban. Parliament Secretariat’s Senior Secretary Dr Zafar Ahmed Khan conducted the oath-taking ceremony.
Fifty seats, reserved for women, are distributed among political parties in proportion to their number of MPs in Parliament.
BNP, which has five MPs in the House, got one reserved seat and picked Rumeen, its assistant international affairs secretary and daughter of Language Movement hero Oli Ahad.
She filed her nomination on May 20, and the Election Commission declared her elected from the reserved seat on May 28.
Talking to reporters after taking oath, Rumeen said she wants a representative government to be formed as early as possible through a participatory election as the current parliament was not elected with people’s votes.
Asked as to why she took oath as an MP of a parliament when she is branding as illegal, the lone BNP female MP said she did it to use parliament as a good avenue to peak in favour of her party, the country and its people since the democratic space for raising voice has got squeezed.
Rumeen hoped that they will be given adequate time to speak up in parliament without considering the number of seats they have.
She said their jailed chairperson Khaleda Zia is eligible to get bail in the cases filed against her, but she has been kept in jail depriving her of the right to get bail.
Rumeen also said Khaleda Zia has been subjected to political vengeance. “I’ll surely talk about the issue in parliament.”