Monsoon Session: Government ready to discuss all issues, including Agnipath, says Union Minister Pralhad Joshi

Vibha Sharma

New Delhi, July 17 

The government is ready to discuss all issues, including Agnipath, Parliamentary Affairs minister Pralhad Joshi today said following an all-party meeting ahead of Monsoon Session, expected to be a stormy one given the Opposition’s mood amid the prevailing circumstances and issues.

The Monsoon session of Parliament will begin on July 18 and will end on August 12.

Joshi said another all-party meeting under EAM S Jaishankar and FM Sitharaman on the current crisis in Sri Lanka had been called on Tuesday.

“We invited 45 political parties of which 36 attended the all-party meeting today. 36 leaders put forth their views, gave suggestions and demanded some issues to be discussed by the government. The government is ready to discuss any issue in Parliament,” Joshi said.

He said 32 bills from various departments will be presented during the session of which 14 legislations are ready. “We will not pass the bills without discussion,” he added.

Opposition leaders, including Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Jairam Ramesh, DMK’s TR Baalu and Tiruchi Siva, TMC’s Sudeep Bandyopadhyay and NCP’s Sharad Pawar, were present at the meeting.

Jairam Ramesh said, “Many political parties, including those supporting NDA, pointed out the contradiction in the government claiming credit for its Presidential candidate on the one hand and killing off the Forest Rights Act, 2006 on the other hand.”

He also objected to the absence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the meeting.

“All-party meeting to discuss forthcoming session of Parliament has just begun and the Prime Minister as usual is absent. Isn’t this ‘unparliamentary’?” Ramesh said.

Replying to it, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said, “Congress’s Jairam Ramesh raised the issue that the Prime Minister did not attend the meeting. I want to tell him that before 2014, the PM never used to attend all-party meet. How many times did Manmohan Singh ji attend the all-party meeting.”

AAP MP Sanjay Singh said he put up three topics, including not allowing Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal to attend the World City Summit, which was infringing on his right. “ED and CBI are being misused, including in case of Satyendra Jain (Delhi Health Minister). ED, whose conviction rate is a barely 0.5 %, is being used to target the opposition,” Sanjay Singh added.

The government was represented by senior Union Minister Rajnath Singh, deputy leader of the Lok Sabha, BJP’s leader in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal and Pralhad Joshi.

BJD’s Pinaki Misra, YSRCP’s Vijaysai Reddy and Midhun Reddy, TRS’ Keshav Rao and Nama Nageshwar Rao, RJD’s AD Singh and Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut were among those present.

It has been the practice of the government to call an all-party meeting before the start of the session to deliberate upon issues and build consensus. The Opposition is expected to push for discussions on issues related to the Agnipath scheme, economy and unemployment.