Sulking Ghulam Nabi Azad chairs Congress Parliament strategy group

Days after the stormy meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), sulking senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday chaired deliberations of the newly constituted Parliament coordination group to draw up the party strategy for the upcoming monsoon session.

Besides Azad, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, another ‘dissenter’ Anand Sharma was also present at the meeting of the Parliament Coordination Committee that discussed issues to be raised during the monsoon session beginning September 14.

A senior Congress leader said the government was yet to communicate the seating arrangement for the opposition leaders for the session where members will be seated in both the Houses – Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha – as well as in viewing galleries to ensure physical distancing.

The monsoon session will be held in two shifts with Rajya Sabha sittings in the morning and Lok Sabha in the evening, barring the opening day.

Congress plans to raise issues ranging from the state of the economy to Chinese transgressions in Ladakh, and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Congress has also decided to oppose the agriculture-related ordinances issued during the inter-session period.

For the Congress, this was the first meeting of the party’s Parliament leaders which were named by party chief Sonia Gandhi after the stormy CWC meeting.

‘Dissenters’ Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor failed to find a place on the panel that would decide on the Congress’ strategy in Parliament. Gandhi had named young leaders Gaurav Gogoi and Ravneet Singh Bittu to the group which also has K C Venugopal, Manickam Tagore, Jairam Ramesh, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, and Ahmed Patel as members.