Premium

Delhi Confidential: ‘Spend more time inside house than in the cafeteria’

Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday had to deal with a rather persistent Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, at the Parliament House entrance.

2 min readUpdated: Feb 4, 2026 03:08 PM IST

Mallikarjun Kharge

Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday had to deal with a rather persistent Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, at the Parliament House entrance. The two leaders met at the stairs where Naidu was waiting for his car. As soon as the minister greeted Kharge, the Congress president took up the issue of restoration of air connectivity at Kalaburagi airport in Karnataka, where services have remained suspended since last October. Naidu said it was on the ministry’s “top priority list” and would be restored soon. “Tell me, in how many days,” Kharge asked. Naidu assured him it will happen soon. Kharge, however, did not enter the House until the minister promised to address the matter on priority.

Attend House

In the parliamentary party meeting of NDA MPs, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned the members against neglecting the House proceedings. Modi, who has warned his party MPs on the issue earlier too, is learnt to have told the members on Tuesday they should spend more time inside the House rather than in the cafeteria. “People have elected you to be inside the House, raise their issues and to be an active participant in the proceedings,” he is learnt to have told the MPs.

Invite Trouble

BJD MP Debashish Samantaray took Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan by surprise on Tuesday as he rose to speak about a recent programme in Odisha, presided over by the Vice-President, where the MP wasn’t invited. Samantray said a privilege notice should be served to the Cuttack administration for not inviting him even though he is an ex-MLA from the district and now an MP from the state. On January 23, Radhakrishnan had inaugurated Netaji Sanskruti Bhawan in Cuttack, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s birthplace, to mark his 129th birth anniversary.