Modi lacks courage to face Parliament, says Sonia

Hitting out at the NDA government, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi lacked the courage of face Parliament and accused him of sabotaging the winter session of Parliament on "flimsy grounds", such as the upcoming elections in Gujarat.

"The prime minister had the audacity to have a midnight celebration in Parliament to launch an ill-prepared and flawed GST, but today he lacks the courage to face Parliament,"  Sonia said in her opening remarks at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

The Congress has been targeting the Modi government over allegations of corruption in high places, issues of conflict of interest in the running of India Foundation and irregularities in the Rafale deal.

"The government is mistaken if it thinks that by locking the temple of democracy, it will escape constitutional accountability ahead of the assembly elections," Sonia said.

The Congress president also accused the Modi government of taking the "extraordinary step" of not holding the winter session to avoid questions and answers ahead of the Gujarat elections.

"The government will be obliged to answer these questions,"  Sonia said at the meeting.  

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley rejected Sonia's charge, arguing that the Congress, too, had delayed a Parliament session in 2011 as it overlapped with Assembly elections.

"It has been a tradition and it has happened several times that Parliament sessions are rescheduled when an election is happening," Jaitley told reporters in Rajkot.