LAC standoff, Agnipath on Opposition agenda for Parliament's monsoon session
The monsoon session of Parliament will begin on July 18 and continue till August 12.
The India-China border standoff, the Agnipath scheme for short-term recruitment to the armed forces, soaring unemployment, and the falling value of the rupee are some of the issues the Congress-led Opposition is likely to raise in the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament to corner the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The monsoon session of Parliament will begin on July 18 and continue till August 12.
On Monday, the Congress attacked the BJP over the India-China border standoff alleging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was appeasing Beijing to save his image. The BJP hit back, asking if the Congress believes in the Indian army or not.
“More than two years after the border crisis with China began in eastern Ladakh, PM Modi’s strategy can be summed up with DDLJ: Deny, Distract, Lie, Justify,” Congress’s Lok Sabha chief whip Gaurav Gogoi said on Monday, borrowing the acronym from the popular Bollywood film, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.
Referring to the PM’s “no one has entered Indian territory” statement, Gogoi added, “Yet somehow India has lost control of 1,000 square kilometres of territory where our troops could earlier patrol but are now either blocked by Chinese troops or are no longer able to enter because of disengagement agreements.”
The BJP lashed out at the Congress, with the party’s national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi saying, “I want to ask the Congress if it has trust in the Indian Army or not…whether it trusts the reply of the Indian Army chief or not? Or do you want to do politics over his statement?”
Trivedi’s comment came soon after former Congress president Rahul Gandhi in a tweet in Hindi said the “increasing infiltration by China and the prime minister’s silence are very harmful for the country”. The BJP leader also claimed that the Congress was barely a cohesive unit and that its leaders wanted to exit the party.
In response to Gogoi’s DDLJ remark, Trivedi said, “The Congress must be the only party whose president and former president are on bail in a corruption case (referring to the National Herald case).”
The Congress demanded a dedicated briefing on the India-China border row to the parliamentary standing committee on defence and a two-day debate in Parliament.
India and China have been locked in a border standoff since May, 2020 and several rounds of military and diplomatic talks have only resulted in partial disengagement of troops from friction points.
A senior Congress leader said the Opposition will also demand a rollback of the Agnipath scheme — which seeks to recruit soldiers for only four years, with a provision to retain 25% of them in the regular cadre for 15 years after another round of screening — in the upcoming monsoon session.
“The farmers’ issue will also be very important, particularly in the context of the non-fulfilment of all promises of the government to the farmers,” the senior Congress leader said, requesting anonymity. “The falling value of the rupee, the unemployment situation, price rise and overall economic mismanagement will also be major issues for us.”
He also said that the DMK, an ally of the Congress, is likely to seek a debate on the ongoing political and economic crises in the neighbouring Sri Lanka.
“Our focus will remain on people’s issues such as the Agnipath scheme and economic problems,” said the senior Congress leader.
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