Farmers Movement Archive

Ahead of winter session, Congress calls internal meeting to plan House strategy

The renewed importance of the winter session of Parliament, one that will see repeal of the three contentious farm laws, has prompted the Congress party to call an internal, brainstorming meeting on November 25 to strategise for the session.The meeting, to be attended by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, and party’s floor leaders, among others, will finalize the Congress’s list of demands related to the repeal bill of the three laws. The party is not in favour of continuous disruptions in the session and doesn’t want a repeat of the washed out monsoon session, senior Congress leaders insisted.The meeting is also expected to take a holistic view on other key issues, opportunities of floor coordination and the general direction of the party in both Houses of Parliament.The meeting assumes significance as the winter session would be the last full session available to the parties ahead of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand, as many of the leaders would be invariably out campaigning during the budget session.The session might also test the complex camaraderie between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress — the two parties accounting for 120 MPs in Parliament. The outfits had acted together in the previous (monsoon) session, resulting in its near washout. But this winter, the gaps between an aspirational Trinamool and a struggling Congress is widening.The uneasiness has even crept in an otherwise excellent equation of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The Trinamool chief has been camping in Delhi since Monday, but according to her aides, she has not sought any appointment with Gandhi.Congress chief whip in Rajya Sabha, Jairam Ramesh, said in an interview to HT that the House must run in the session. “Let us have a well-informed debate to revisit why those acts were made. I would certainly like this session to function normally. I do not want a repeat of the monsoon session. The washout was forced upon us by the government,” he said.The Congress will support the proposal to form a committee to look into farm issues, as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 19. But it also wants to debate the situation in Afghanistan and India’s neighbourhood scenario, the border situation in the light of the India-China conflict and a debate on environmental issues in the light of the Modi’s promises in the Glasgow climate summit.Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will call an all-party meeting for their respective Houses. The government has called an all-party meeting on November 28, to be attended by the Prime Minister, to discuss the farm repeal bills and the proposed committee.

Hindustan Times

24-11-2021

India