Sonia chairs last CWC meet, hits out at Modi

PATIDARS UPSET; NCP SAYS WILL CONTEST ALL 182 SEATS

Chairing her last meeting of the Congress Working Committee, Congress president Sonia Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the government for “sabotaging the Winter Session of Parliament”. Mrs Gandhi said, “The Modigovernment in its arrogance has cast a dark shadow on India’s parliamentary democracy by sabotaging the Winter Session of Parliament on flimsy grounds. The government is mistaken if it thinks that by locking the temple of democracy, it will escape constitutional accountability ahead of the Assembly elections.”

Refuting Mrs Gandhi’s charge, finance minister Arun Jaitley said Parliament sessions were often rescheduled to ensure they did not overlap with elections, and that the Congress had itself done so several times.

The Winter Session of Parliament traditionally convenes from the third week of November and lasts till the third week of December.

Assembly polls are due to be held in Gujarat in two phases on December 9 and 14.

Chiding Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the midnight Parliament session to roll out GST, Mrs at various places in the state. By the evening it was clear that there were differences in PAAS ranks as one of its leaders Lalit Vasoya filed his nomination papers despite PAAS convener Dinesh Bambaniya saying that none from the organisation would do so.

Trouble brewed between NCP and the Congress too with the former saying that it would contest all the 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections.

“I think it would be better for us to fight on all the seats on our own than in alliance with the Congress,” senior NCP leader and former Union minister Praful Patel said. Gandhi said, “The Prime Minister had the audacity to have a midnight celebration in Parliament to launch an ill-prepared and flawed GST. But today he lacks the courage to face Parliament.”