NEW DELHI: The AAP on Tuesday accused the Central government of playing politics on national security issues after the party didn’t get an invite for an all-party meet on Bangladesh.
On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar chaired the all-party meeting to brief leaders about the situation in Bangladesh. Several MPs, including Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ of JD(U), DMK’s T R Baalu, SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav, Trinamool’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay and NCP’s Supriya Sule attended the meeting.
Taking exception for not being invited to the meeting despite being a national party with 13 MPs, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said in a post on ‘X’ that it shows the “petty mentality of the Union government”. He wrote, “Not inviting AAP, a national party with 13 MPs, to this important all-party meeting shows the lack of seriousness of the government.”
Singh told reporters that Jaishankar informed both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha about the evolving situation in the neighbouring country. “We have to support the government in such circumstances. This is an issue related to national security. We did not raise any queries and the entire Opposition listened to S Jaishankar statement.”
“Today, when the all-party meeting happened, a representative of AAP, a national party with 10 Rajya Sabha and three Lok Sabha MPs, was not called... we would like to know why we were not invited to the crucial meeting,” he added. Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said it was “wrong” the party was not invited to the meet.