New Delhi
Around two dozen “like-minded” parties will be meeting in Congress-ruled Karnataka on July 17-18 in Bengaluru to firm up strategies to jointly take on the Modi-led BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls besides the Parliament’s Monsoon Session, starting July 20, with the situation in Manipur and price rise ranking high on its agenda.
The Parliament session will thus be a stormy one with disruptions set to be the order of the day.
The Opposition is seeking to put up a united front and joint candidates against the BJP-led NDA next year and is seeking to overcome the numerous hurdles, differences and complexities among its partners to prevent the ruling dispensation from returning to power at the Centre.
Hence, despite being adversaries in States, the Opposition parties are closing ranks trying to forge a united front at the Centre to stop the BJP juggernaut in 2024. As many as 16 Opposition parties had held their first meeting in Patna last month. Their ranks have since swelled with 24 parties likely to attend the Bengaluru meet.
The two-day meeting in Bengaluru hosted by Congress, which recently wrested the State from the BJP, will also see the Opposition chalk out a strategy to take on the Government over the situation in the northeastern State in the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
While the Opposition parties have been separately demanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on the Manipur situation and which he has not done yet, the Monsoon Session will provide them with the opportunity to jointly corner the Government on the issue.
The Congress has already announced that it will demand a discussion on the Manipur situation in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and would like Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the country into confidence on the matter.
The party also said it will raise some other pressing issues facing the country such as railway safety in the wake of the Balasore train tragedy, demand of joint parliamentary committee probe into the Adani issue, inflation, bringing the GST under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and the sexual harassment allegations against BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
Home Minister Amit Shah had undertaken a four-day tour to the troubled State seeking to ensure the return of lasting peace but the situation in Manipur continues to be tense with sporadic incidents of violence happening on a daily basis. A woman was shot and her face disfigured in a brutal incident on Saturday and the police have arrested 9 persons including five women in connection with the crime.
In a separate incident, three empty trucks were set on fire in Manipur’s Imphal West district the same dau. The incident took place at Awang Sekmai in Sekmai police station area. The trucks, used for carrying LPG cylinders, were parked in an open field when they were set on fire.
Also a person was killed when armed assailants attacked the village defence force of a community at Laimaton Thangbuh village in Kangpokpi district. The incident took place on Sunday morning. Women and children from the village had been moved out to Churachandpur earlier following ethnic clashes on May 3. It was guarded by the village defence force only.
More than 150 people have lost their lives and several thousand have been injured since ethnic clashes broke out in Manipur on May 3, after a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in the hill districts to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status.
