Busy Day for Oppn as Rahul Gandhi Leads Breakfast Meet, Cycle Protest to Plan Parliament Roadmap

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday led a breakfast meeting of opposition leaders to discuss holding a ‘mock Parliament’ in the premises as both Houses face disruptions and protests over the Pegasus row and farmers’ agitation.

While parties such as the Trinamool Congress, Shiv Sena, NCP and RJD, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party was conspicuous by its absence. The AAP has always stayed away from opposition strategy meetings in Parliament, especially those led by the Congress. Unlike in the past, AAP had been invited for this meeting but it chose to stay away.

AAP MP Sanjay Singh, who skipped the breakfast meeting, said, “Attending or not attending (the meet) is not important. Whenever a discussion is held in parliament, we will support the farmers and raise the issue of snooping row.”

Addressing the meeting, Gandhi said: “The single most important thing in my view is that we unite this force. The more this voice (of the people) unites, the more powerful this voice will become, the more difficult it’ll become for BJP-RSS to suppress it.”

After the meet, the opposition leaders cycled to Parliament.

While the monsoon session of parliament began on July 19, parliament has functioned for only 18 hours out of possible 107 hours in the first two weeks. More than ₹ 133 crore in taxpayer money has been lost because of disruptions, government sources said on Saturday.

As the Opposition planned its strategy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his worries about the opposition not allowing the House to function. Addressing the BJP parliamentary party meet, the prime minister asked the government and the MPs to do whatever they can to ensure that the house functions.

Sources said that Union Minister Rajnath Singh had called Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, on Monday afternoon to seek his support amid protests to which Kharge said the government should allow discussions in parliament.

The opposition has been demanding a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the Pegasus snooping row and the allegations that Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, poll strategist Prashant Kishore, judges, activists and even ministers were potential targets of an Israeli spyware.

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