New Delhi: The Monsoon Session of Parliament begins on Sept.14th. Ahead of the session, the Congress parliamentary strategy group is meeting today to hammer out its responses to the Govt’s failures and moves for the future including the ratification of 11 ordinances that it got issued in the interregnum between the budget and this delayed monsoon session! he meeting of the party’s parliament strategy group will be chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and attended by Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Gaurav Gogoi, K Suresh, Manickam Tagore, and Ravneet Singh Bittu. Sonia Gandhi is also the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP).
Interestingly some of the 23 signatories to a letter to the party president seeking a complete overhaul of the organization will come face-to-face with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi for the first time after the fiery and unusually long Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on August 24. Four of the 23 signatories who are CWC members —Azad, Sharma, Mukul Wasnik, and Jitin Prasada—came under fire from other colleagues at the meeting for writing the letter.
The meeting is expected to discuss the issues to be raised in both the Houses during the session, such as the border standoff with China in Ladakh and Facebook’s alleged nexus with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the economic crisis and the decline in GDP, GST compensation to states, job losses and agrarian distress, the sale of 32 public Sector Undertakings and the privatization of the Railways and Airports. It will also seek a discussion on the PM CARES Fund. The meeting will also take up the report submitted by a group, headed by former finance minister P Chidambaram, on the party’s stand on the 11 ordinances that the government is likely to bring in the monsoon session.
A Congress functionary said the party will talk to other like-minded opposition parties to present a united front in Parliament on all critical issues confronting the country. Opposition leaders are keen to work closely with each other to take on the government in Parliament. This was expressed by Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Shiv Sena chief and Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader and Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren at a recent meeting of non-NDA chief ministers with Sonia Gandhi on JEE/NEET and GST issues.
