The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Wednesday skipped the lunch hosted by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for INDIA bloc allies, a day after SP lawmakers tried to form a separate group during the Opposition’s march from Parliament to Akashvani Bhavan.
On Tuesday, for most of the march, the Samajwadi Party tried to maintain its own group rather than mingle with other parties, with the Congress playing the leading role. However, there were others in the party that expressed some amount of dissatisfaction with the way the protests are being planned. They pointed out that the Congress top brass has kept other INDIA alliance leaders in the dark about how such protests will evolve. Another senior Samajwadi Party MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, attributed the absence primarily to inadequate and delayed communication from the Congress. “The Congress party had sent only a formal letter to the SP office and it arrived late. First of all if this had been communicated properly, many of our MPs who left last evening would have stayed back. The lawmaker added that Akhilesh had been unwell with a high fever since Tuesday evening and had flown back to Lucknow. Akhilesh’s support to the Opposition is also crucial to preventing the passage of the proposed delimitation-related amendments to the Constitution, which is a key target of the BJP. The ruling dispensation has not yet prorogued the Monsoon Session of Parliament, keeping alive its chances of reintroducing the Delimitation Bill.
Because he had commitments for the Rajya Sabha elections, sP’s Udaiveer Singh said that Akhilesh Yadav had come back on Tuesday night.
“We are a regional party so we have to take care of our commitments in Uttar Pradesh,” he said. Secondly, a small phone call from Kharge ji or any senior leader to SP senior leadership would have coordinated things properly,” the MP said. “Though this won’t affect our alliance in any way, proper communication could have saved the Congress from this embarrassing situation,” he remarked.
Congress communication chief Jairam Ramesh tweeted, “All INDIA janbandhan parties had been invited for today’s lunch. But the decision for the lunch had been taken late last night and communicated. There is needless comment in some sections of the media on it. INDIA and other Opposition parties are united and stand in solidarity against Vote Chori, SIR and Delimitation.”
It was therefore natural that some parties could not be represented.
