Budget Session: BJP to focus on blasts, price rise

The luncheon meeting hosted by Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee for NDA and UPA partners spelt out the mood of the upcoming Budget Session of Parliament starting from February 23.

The luncheon meeting hosted by Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee for NDA and UPA partners spelt out the mood of the upcoming Budget Session of Parliament starting from February 23. The Opposition BJP has clarified that its main agenda would be price rise and its impact on aam admi along with the “internal security” situation in the country, especially in the aftermath of Samjhauta Express blasts.

“We have told the Speaker that we are not going to wait for the Budget to unfold. We want answers from the government on these two issues,” senior BJP leader V K Malhotra said. The party claimed to have the support of MPs cutting across party lines.

Meanwhile, the BJP seems to have agreed to postpone a discussion on FDI in retail and the “issue of land deals for SEZ projects”. On the issue of internal security, the party has put in an adjournment notice. With all these issues on the cards, February 27 could very well be the day of disruption. It is also the day on which the Assembly poll results of three states, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur, will be released. With the Presidential address and the Railway Budget taking up most of the first two working days of the session, February 27 is the only “free day for protest”. The Union Budget will be unveiled the next day. However, the political battle in Uttar Pradesh did not cast a shadow over today’s lunch and dinner meetings. “It was all cordial and entirely about business in Parliament,” the Speaker’s office asserted.

Only 9 tickets to EBCs is in stark contrast to the INDIA bloc and Congress’s EBC push with the Atipichhda Nyay Sankalp, a separate resolution for EBCs that Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav released last month. (PTI Photo)

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