PM to Meet Ministers Ahead of All-Party Meet to Break Parliament Logjam

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Aug 03, 2015:  With half of the Monsoon session virtually washed out, the government will make a fresh bid to end the two-week-long deadlock in Parliament with an all-party meeting today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet senior ministers at 10:30 am ahead of the meeting where, sources say, the government is likely to propose a statement by the PM in Parliament to break the logjam.

 

On Sunday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu had hinted that PM Modi may speak in Parliament.

"The government is willing to walk (an) extra mile to placate the Opposition. The Prime Minister can intervene if the debate warrants intervention," Mr Naidu said.

Underscoring Mr Naidu’s point, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the Congress of "running away" from debate.

"Are you afraid that whenever PM speaks he comes up with hard hitting facts? Are you afraid whenever he talks, it appeals to the people of this country?" she said.

The BJP has refused to meet the Congress’s demand for the resignations of Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It has, however, offered a reply by Ms Swaraj in Parliament and said it was ready for a discussion on the Lalit Modi controversy, even though it has dubbed the Vyapam scandal as a state issue.

The Congress - which is on the warpath over the Vyapam scam and the Lalit Modi controversies - plans to hold a meeting of its Parliamentary Party hours before the all-party meet, presumably to fine-tune its strategy. The meeting will be addressed by party chief Sonia Gandhi.

The party has made it clear that breaking the deadlock depended on a "tangible" proposal from the Prime Minister on the Opposition’s demands.

"It (the three BJP leaders’ fate) should be on the agenda for the discussions," Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad had earlier said.

"The government has been humiliating us from the first day. It refused to give us a Leader of Parliament by talking about our numbers," Congress lawmaker Adhir Ranjan Choudhury, who landed in a controversy last week with his placard protest in Lok Sabha on Sunday.

 

Courtesy: NDTV