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Speaker Om Birla forms lawmaker groups with 60 nations for Parliament's global outreach
Officials added that more such groups were being planned.
New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has constituted “Parliamentary Friendship Groups” with more than 60 countries, in a bid to enhance Parliament’s global outreach.
The groups, comprising senior lawmakers from across political parties, aim “to deepen dialogue and exchanges with legislatures across continents and to complement traditional diplomacy with sustained parliamentary interaction,” a Lok Sabha communique said on Monday.
The idea behind the initiative, the communique said, “is to allow lawmakers to speak directly to their counterparts abroad, share legislative experience, and build trust through regular engagement and exchange best practices to further strengthen bilateral relations and promote greater mutual understanding. Beyond parliamentary procedure, the groups are expected to facilitate conversations on trade, technology, social policy, culture, and global challenges that democracies face today.”
The initiative comes in the backdrop of New Delhi dispatching parliamentary groups to several countries in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor last year; as part of this, Indian lawmakers played a key role in the international outreach against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
The new groups of lawmakers are expected to strengthen India’s global standing and project India not only as a political power but as a confident and mature democracy willing to engage, listen, and collaborate, said the communique.
Senior parliamentarians including BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Baijayant Panda, Nishikant Dubey, Anurag Singh Thakur, Bhartruhari Mahtab, D. Purandeswari, Hema Malini, Biplab Kumar Deb, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Jagdambika Pal, Sasmit Patra and Aparajita Sarangi and Congress MPs P. Chidambaram, Gaurav Gogoi, Manish Tiwari, KC Venugopal and Shashi Tharoor will lead the parliamentary groups.
Some of the other politicians who will lead the groups include ADMK’s Thambidurai, Samajwadi Party leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav, DMK’s T.R. Baalu and Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, Trinamool Congress’ Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar,
The countries with whom the groups have been constituted include Sri Lanka, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, South Africa, Bhutan, Saudi, Israel, Maldives, USA, Russia, EU Parliament, South Korea, Nepal, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, Oman, Australia, Greece, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico, Iran and UAE.
Each group has 11 MPs. Officials added that more such groups were being planned.
