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Unfortunate and unfair, says Kharge after Centre calls 4 parties for meeting
The proposed meeting will be held on Monday at 10 am at Rajya Sabha leader Piyush Goyal’s office. But the Opposition parties are meeting at 9.45 am to take a final call on attending the meeting.
The NDA government has invited four Opposition parties—whose MPs are among the 12 suspended lawmakers—for talks on Monday but a section of the Opposition is skeptical about the outreach and wants an all-party meeting instead.
Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter to parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi later in the evening and termed the decision to invite just four parties as “unfair and unfortunate”.
The proposed meeting will be held on Monday at 10 am at Rajya Sabha leader Piyush Goyal’s office. But the Opposition parties are meeting at 9.45 am to take a final call on attending the meeting.
In the letter to Joshi, Kharge said, “All Opposition parties are united in the protest against the suspension of the 12 MPs. We have been requesting from the evening of November 29 itself that either the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha or the Leader of the House Shri Piyush Goyal should call leaders of all Opposition parties for a discussion to break the stalemate.”
“This reasonable request of ours has not been agreed to, further inviting only leaders of four Opposition parties instead of inviting leaders of all Opposition parties is unfair and unfortunate.”
The Congress, Trinamool, Shiv Sena and CPIM have been invited for the meeting. On November 29, six Congress MPs, two lawmakers each from Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena and one each of CPIM and CPI were suspended for the entire winter session for unprecedented acts of misconduct and violent behaviour. Since CPI’s Binoy Viswom, the lone MP from his party in the Upper House, is suspended, he has not been invited for the meeting.
Even as Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu had been regularly meeting Opposition leaders over the continuing logjam induced by the suspension, this is the first formal approach from the government to the Opposition outfits in a bid for resolution. The government managers including Union minister Piyush Goyal and Pralhad Joshi had been asking for an apology from the Opposition to revoke the suspension.
But the Opposition is skeptical of this new initiative with just four days left of the winter session.
Trinamool Congress floor leader Derek O’Brien termed the government’s approach as a stunt. “Monday morning STUNT from a Government which does not want #Parliament to function. Government calls leaders of the 4 Opposition parties whose 12 RS MPs have been arbitrarily suspended. Government leaves other 10 Opposition parties out. Failed stunt. Why is the govt not calling all opposition parties?” he tweeted.
CPIM leader Elamaram Kareem also flagged the absence of other parties and said, “Opposition would meet Monday morning to decide. But we wanted an all-party meeting while the government is offering to meet a select group of leaders.”
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told HT, “We have already said no to the proposal.”
On December 15, in an otherwise heated discussion with four Opposition leaders, Naidu had observed that an all-party meeting will be called when it is appropriate. “It implied that a meeting would serve no purpose when either the suspended MPs or leaders of their respective parties are not willing to reflect on their conduct and regret the same in an appropriate manner,” said a Rajya Sabha official.
