NEW DELHI: Top leaders of the Congress, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party president Sonia Gandhi, met here on Wednesday to discuss how to resolve theParliament logjam triggered by the decision to allow foreign equity in retail.
The meeting of the Congress core group was held at the Prime Minister’s 7, Race Course Road official residence.
Party spokesperson Manish Tewari said: “The PM has made it clear that it is a well thought-out decision and the party supports it.”
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, defence minister AK Antony, home minister P Chidambaram, commerce minister Anand Sharma and political secretary to the Congress president Ahmed Patel were present.
The nearly two-hour-long meeting started around 12.30pm.
The meeting took place after Mukherjee met Congress MPs to discuss the standoff over the decision to allow foreign equity in retail.
The government’s known troubleshooter held a brief meeting with Gandhi at her 10 Janpath residence before meeting party MPs to allay their apprehensions on the decision to allow 51 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail and 100 percent in single brand retail, sources said.
The meetings assume significance in the wake of opposition to the move even from within the party.
The Essay on Prime Minister Ireland Party State
The modern political history of Ireland can be separated into two time periods. The first period is it's time spent under British rule as only one territory of the United Kingdom. The second period, which represents the beginning of the modern Irish state, took place during the early twentieth century. The road to national sovereignty was neither easy nor short as Britain was far from eager to let ...
Congress MP from Uttar Pradesh Sanjay Singh on Tuesday criticised the government, saying the move would hurt the poor and the timing was not right because of the upcoming assembly elections in his state.
Kerala Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala has written a letter to Manmohan Singh, opposing the decision. He also requested Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy not to implement the proposal in the state.
The standoff with the opposition has led to a stalemate in Parliament, which could not run at all for the first seven days of the 21-day winter session that began on Nov 22 due to various issues, including FDI in retail.
No compromise on FDI in retail: BJP
As Parliament continued to be paralysed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday reiterated that it would not compromise on its demand for a rollback on the decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail.
Several BJP leaders spoke out on the issue of allowing 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail and 100 percent in single-brand retail.
While senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi said the government had taken the decision under pressure from the US and other developed nations, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj asked why the government was running away from discussion under a rule that entails voting. Leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said the decision was a knee-jerk reaction from the government.
“They have no study to suggest FDI in retail will help, they have done it only under pressure from countries like United States, United Kingdom and France. They are doing this to give employment to people of these countries,” Joshi told reporters.
He also said the BJP was supporting the nationwide shutdown called by traders against the FDI decision.
“They (the government) should either roll back or roll out,” Joshi said.
Asked about the continuing Parliament logjam, he also said that it was the government’s responsibility to make the house run and the opposition could not do anything.
Commenting on social networking site Twitter even as Parliament was adjourned once again amid protest over FDI in retail, Swaraj said: “We want a discussion in Parliament on our adjournment motion on FDI in retail. Why is the government running away from a discussion followed by a vote in the house?”
The Term Paper on Fdi in Retail Without Enhanced Social Security Will Be Suicidal
A lot of well off and educated sections of our society are rooting for FDI in retail. There seems to be a disappointment among the middle/upper middle class consumers and the corporate world that the Government of India has put this policy on hold. There was an article published in The Telegraph on 5th December 2011 titled “How Bengal gains from FDI: Experiment that protected 6500 farmers from a ...
“This means the government does not have the majority support in Parliament on this decision,” she said.
Jaitley added: “FDI in retail cannot be introduced merely as a knee-jerk response because the government is suspected to have abandoned economic reforms.”
“We are not opposed either to the concept of FDI or giving an additional thrust to the reform programme. Changes which hurt the Indian economy can hardly be termed as reforms,” he wrote in an article released by the party office.
