Impressed Rahul promises to speak in Parliament
New Delhi : It was a show of strength and opposition unity at Congress president Sonia Gandhi”s iftar party on Monday evening as prominent persons from different walks of life gathered to break bread after a day-long fast.
The event lived up to its expectations of making a statement about the common political intent against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Though for the sake of record, party spokespersons maintained that it was a social event and there should be no effort to read any political meaning into it.
At the two main tables, Sonia Gandhi was flanked by the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, and the Trinamool Congress MP Derek O”Brien who heads the party in the Rajya Sabha. Janata Dal ( U) chief Sharad Yadav accompanied by spokesperson K C Tyagi shared the table with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. They all sat there for a long time and exchanged pleasantries with other guests as well.
Talking to reporters, Rahul said the Opposition has plenty to talk about in Parliament in the upcoming session and that he is ready to take lead in cornering the Modi government. ” I will speak in Parliament, even if PM speaks or not,” he said.
Chief Ministers of Congress ruled states – Assam, Himachal, Uttarakhand and former chief ministers of Rajasthan and Maharashtra were also mingling with the guests that included the National Conference leader and former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, DMK MP Kanimozhi, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Satish Misra, and the RJD representative Premchand Gupta. “We were always going to attend this event, you people have been creating needless confusion,”
quipped Gupta even as he explained that the party supremo Lalu Yadav was away in Patna hosting a similar event. The Nationalist Congress Party headed by Sharad Pawar was there in full force with MPs Praful Patel, Tariq Anwar and D P Tripathi making their presence felt. The Congress president”s political adviser Ahmed Patel was keeping a keen eye on the political arrivals, but there was not much concern about the absentees like Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav or Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. All the party seniors including Ghulam Nabi Azad, P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Digvijaya Singh, Ambika Soni, Motilal Vora, Kamalnath, Janardan Dwivedi, were present on the occasion.