NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, leaders of 24 Opposition parties came together on Saturday evening and vowed to corner the NDA government on a number of key issues, including the recent Pahalgam attack, Operation Sindoor, the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar electoral rolls and US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of brokering a ‘ceasefire’ between India and Pakistan.
The virtual meeting was attended by several senior leaders, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, parliamentary party leader Sonia Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, NCP (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thakarey, TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee, J&K CM Omar Abdullah and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, Tejashwi Yadav (RJD), Ram Gopal Yadav (SP), Tiruchi Siva (DMK) M A Baby of CPI(M), D Raja (CPI), and CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya.
Briefing reporters, Congress’ deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Pramod Tiwari said though several issues came up in the course of the meeting, the bloc has unanimously decided to focus on eight key issues.
The leaders expressed grave concern over the government’s failure in bringing the terrorists behind the Pahalgam attack to justice and its “silence” on repeated claims made by US President Donald Trump in brokering a ‘ceasefire’ between India and Pakistan, Tiwari said.
The leaders also deliberated on the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar that “threatens the voting rights of people”, he said. “There is an undeclared Emergency that has been imposed and voting rights are being snatched away.”
Tiwari said the opposition parties would expect the Prime Minister to be present in Parliament and respond to the issues raised in the House, asserting that, “Parliament is more important than travelling abroad”. Several parties raised the issue of “atrocities” against SC, ST, women and minorities, inflation, farmers’ distress and the delimitation excercise.
According to sources, Rahul Gandhi spoke about the Pahalgam attack and Modi government’s foreign policy failure.