Union minister Kiren Rijiju.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju has called for an all-party meeting on Sunday, a day ahead of the Winter Session of Parliament.
As a stormy session is expected, with the ruling NDA emboldened by the Bihar win, the Opposition is poised to raise issues like SIR, US trade tariffs, etc.
The meeting, set to convene at the Parliament Annexe on Sunday, will be held to discuss bills that the government is sent to introduce this session, as well as come to agreements on contentious matters between the government and Opposition.
With the government bringing in 10 bills as part of its legislative agenda, the Session is set to see sharp exchanges between the treasury benches and the Opposition.
A bill which was proposed to bring Chandigarh under Article 240 of the Constitution created a furore after which the government took it back. Another bill proposes the merger of the UGC, AICTE and NTA into the Higher Education Council of India, etc.
Minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal had earlier said that the meeting will convene so that the Opposition parties can be shown the proposed legislations.
“We are going to have a meeting with the Secretaries of various departments. We will conduct a scrutiny of all the pending bills that are supposed to be passed, and then an all-party meeting will be held where we will share the list of bills with the leader of the opposition, and then we will form strategies according to the suggestions by the opposition leaders,” Meghwal had told ANI earlier this week.
The Opposition is also looking at cornering the government on some issues. Top among them will be the Special Intensive Revision as well as the role of the Election Commission.
“The pollution and breathlessness in Delhi, flood relief, and joblessness are some of the issues that we will raise,” Manickam Tagore, deputy chief whip of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, said.
The session will be held between December 1 and 19 with just 15 sittings, Rijiju had tweeted earlier, stating that President Droupadi Murmu has approved the proposal of the government to convene the session.
The Opposition had protested against the shorter term of the session. Congress general secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh had said that this sends out the wrong message. “What is the message being conveyed? Clearly the Government has no business to transact, no Bills to get passed, and no debates to be allowed,” Ramesh had tweeted.