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Congress sets conditions for attending all-party meet

Last Updated 01 August 2015, 18:38 IST

The Congress on Saturday set down terms for attending the all-party meeting convened by the Narendra Modi government on Monday to break the two-week-long logjam in Parliament.

“The fate of the three BJP leaders should be on the agenda for discussion,” said Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, referring to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Chief Ministers of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, respectively. Azad also rejected criticism by NDA ministers that the Congress was responsible for the logjam.

“BJP leaders and ministers should not lecture us on logjam,” he said, adding that the Congress was a responsible political party, and keen on the passage of very important bills, and also comprehensively discussing terrorism.

Azad also said the Congress expected the prime minister, and not the home minister, to respond to the debate. The BJP is disinclined to make any concession to the Congress, and claims it has done all it could to end the deadlock in Parliament. It has contended that Swaraj has already declared her readiness to make a statement in Parliament to defend herself. On the allegations against the chief ministers, the BJP argued that state issues cannot be discussed in Parliament.

With Parliament deadlocked for two weeks, the government had called an all-party meeting on Friday, but postponed it to Monday noon after the Congress expressed inability to attend citing an internal meeting.

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(Published 01 August 2015, 18:37 IST)

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