As the newly formed coordination committee of Congress members of Parliament met for the first time on Thursday, they took up the issue of the government scrapping question hour in the monsoon session of parliament.
The group of ten parliamentarians from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were led by the leader of the opposition in the upper house, Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Last week, Congress president Sonia Gandhi reconstituted the group for better coordination adding new members like KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh and Ahmed Patel from the Rajya Sabha and Gaurav Gogoi and Ravneet Singh Bittu from the Lok Sabha.
It was seen as a snub to leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma who were part of the 23 leaders who had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi asking for an overhaul of the Congress party, with elections at every level.
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`We discussed how there is complete unanimity on the issue of question hour,’’ said one of the MPs,
{{/usCountry}}`We discussed how there is complete unanimity on the issue of question hour,’’ said one of the MPs,
{{/usCountry}}“The government had tried to take advantage of reports of dissent within the party and announced that we had agreed to the scrapping of question hour. This is totally incorrect and everyone was agreed on it.’’
The coordination group which is expected to decide the party’s stance on all parliamentary issues is expected to meet every other day. It will then brief the strategy group which includes party president, Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former party president Rahul Gandhi.
The strategy group also summons domain experts like P Chidambaram for specific meetings.
“We have decided that the main issues that we’d like to raise in this session are the pandemic and the way the lockdown was imposed, Chinese aggression, privatisation, GDP contraction, price rise, MSME crisis among other issues,’’ said another member who attended the meeting.
Jairam Ramesh is expected to submit his report on the 11 ordinances that the government is pushing for passage as bills in the monsoon session of Parliament. The report will be submitted to the Congress President and on September 8, will reveal what position the Congress will have on each of the issues. HT had reported how the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020, The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 and The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020 may be opposed by the party.
The group also discussed including like minded parties in their discussions so that a coordinated strategy could be worked out by the opposition