NEW DELHI: Opposition coordination seems to be back in Parliament even as INDIA bloc of parties may not be holding formal meetings to work out joint floor strategy on common issues against the BJP-led government, but communications at informal gatherings at the lobby before the House opens at 11am, is where the parties are drawing up their plans for the day.
Just as all opposition parties met Speaker Om Birla in Lok Sabha on Thursday and submitted joint protest petition against leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi not being able to speak in the House, with Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar disallowing discussion on issues that opposition parties have been keen to raise in the House, their floor leaders decided on Thursday morning that leader of Opposition and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge would speak in the House and raise their respective issues.
On Thursday, Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman’s house being attacked by Karni Sena and the EPIC scam (fraud voter ID card) issue that TMC members were trying to raise under various rules for the last two weeks were among a few other issues that all the leaders decided would be taken up by Kharge on their behalf.
The plan was that Kharge would speak on the Karni Sena attack on which notices had been given and take up EPIC issue while speaking. But when he was disallowed to speak by the chair, who did not allow the Karni Sena attack issue to be raised in the House at all, MPs belonging to SP, Congress, TMC, CPI, CPI-M, RJD and other opposition parties staged a walkout from the House. BJD and YSRCP MPs remained seated. The members were back after 15 minute and rejoined the proceedings after having registered their joint protest.
The INDIA bloc meetings that had started after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls at Kharge’s chamber in Parliament, had long been done away with, with TMC, SP and a few other parties dropping out of the meeting, with the message that INDIA is not a Congress-led bloc but an equal joint platform of Opposition parties against BJP.
Soon after, in the last winter session no meetings happened as Congress had lost Maharashtra, Haryana state polls and the regional parties were further emboldened in defying a Congress leadership in the INDIA bloc. But this budget session, the new format of working together seems to have returned to the opposition benches.