Farooq Abdullah was among a host of politicans who flew down to Kolkata for Mamata Banerjee's grand swearing-in ceremony.
As his fellow politicians stood in attention, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah was seen talking on his phone during the National Anthem being played at Mamata Banerjee's swearing-in ceremony in Kolkata today.
Seated next to him was RJD leader Lalu Prasad, when State chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee requested all to stand up for the National Anthem at the grand ceremony at Kolkata's Red Road which was also attended by chief ministers Arvind Kejriwal, Nitish Kumar and Akhilesh Yadav.
Asked about Mr Abdullah's phone use, Senior Congress leader Ambika Soni said, "I really don't know what happened. But, whenever the national anthem is being played, we all should stand in attention."
In the nearly-one minute video doing the rounds on microblogging site Twitter, Mr Abdullah is seen with the phone clutched to his ear while the national anthem is on, in sharp contrast to Ms Banerjee and her elected ministers standing in attention.
"How patriot and nationalist Farooq Abdullah can afford to insult the nation and anthem like this," said one of the responses on Twitter.
A galaxy of political leaders were present at the ceremony. Among them were Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley representing the Centre and DMK leader Kanimozhi.