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3 Congress CMs likely to give today's G20 dinner a miss as party chief Mallikarjun Kharge not invited
At least three Congress chief ministers may skip the G20 dinner to be hosted at Bharat Mandapam on September 9 by President Droupadi Murmu.
At least three Congress chief ministers may skip the G20 dinner to be hosted at Bharat Mandapam on September 9 by President Droupadi Murmu after party chief and the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, was not invited for the banquet.
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Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel have decided not to attend the G20 dinner, said a senior party functionary. But Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, party leaders said, has left Shimla for Delhi ostensibly to attend the dinner, which will be hosted for the global leaders, G20 dignitaries and Union ministers and chief ministers.
A top-ranking Congress leader said that the decision to attend the G20 dinner “has been left to the CMs”.
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Even as Kharge did not speak about his omission from the guest list, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi hit out at the government over not inviting the Congress president, particularly since he holds a constitutional post as the Upper House Leader of Opposition.
“They have decided not to invite the Leader of the Opposition. It tells you something. It tells you that they don’t value the Leader of 60% of India’s population. It’s something that people should think about - why they are feeling the need to do that and what type of thinking goes behind that,” Gandhi said in the Belgium capital Brussels.
A government functionary indicated that only Union ministers, chief ministers and Supreme Court judges have been invited to the dinner.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the G20 Summit, the Congress alleged that the failure to conduct the decadal Census was one of the biggest failures of the “NDA (No Data Available) government”.
The Congress also emphasised that a caste census is essential. “Not only has the Modi government failed to carry out the Census, the Socio-Economic Caste Census that was conducted by the UPA government in 2011 remains suppressed. It has even opposed the Bihar government’s attempt at a state-level Caste Census in the Supreme Court…Without establishing the count, categorisation and characterisation of the most numerous OBC population, it is impossible to ensure adequate development and social justice for all Indians. We firmly believe in the principle of parity not charity, for which the Caste Census is essential,” said party leader Jairam Ramesh.
Ramesh announced the party has three demands: “Stop denying 14 crore Indians their basic rights under the NFSA (National Food Security Act, 2013), and increase the beneficiary quota until the Census is carried out”; “conduct an updated national Caste Census, and stop opposing state-level Caste Census efforts”; and “end the suppression of data inconvenient to the government, like the 2017-18 NSS and the 2022-23 CES, stop manipulating NFHS to hide failures in health indicators, and restore faith in India’s historically robust statistical system.”
