New Delhi: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wants the Congress MPs to be more active in the House and will soon set up a system to measure their performance. According to party insiders, Rahul wants the Congress MPs to take part in the debates and discussions, raise issues of public interest, give notices, be aware of policy issues, ask tough questions to the government and defend the party position in the Lok Sabha.
A group of seniors may soon be tasked with the responsibility to measure the performance of the MPs on these counts and some kind of ranking may as well follow, said party insiders.
"This is a very good move. The people expect the INDIA bloc to raise their issues and seek accountability from the government. The government's failures on many counts including economic, social and political issues are before the people. It is the opposition's duty to raise the same in Parliament. More people now watch the proceedings of the Parliament to see what their elected representatives are doing there," ex-Union minister and All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary in charge of the organization JD Seelam told ETV Bharat.
Party insiders cited an example saying that Rahul wanted more MPs to participate in house debates and therefore allowed a greater number of speakers from the Congress during the debate on the Union Budget 2024-25 including Lok Sabha MPs Kumari Selja, Amar Singh, Mohamed Jawed and Praniti Shinde.
He also held a separate interaction with the women MPs recently to understand their issues and concerns. The party had won 99 MPs but the current strength is 98 as a by-poll for the Wayanad seat vacated by Rahul is to be held over the coming days. As several of the 98 Congress MPs are new to the house, a series of training sessions are being arranged for them to educate the lawmakers about the parliamentary rules and procedures.
"I attended the first training session and it was very useful. More such training sessions would be organised by the party," Lok Sabha MP from Davangere Prabha Mallikarjun told ETV Bharat.
According to party insiders, new systems are being tried as the grand old party has become more aggressive in the house and Rahul has to justify his role as the Leader of the Opposition of the INDIA bloc which collectively has 234 MPs out of the total 543.
Rahul has said that he is the people's LoP and is trying to live up to that promise by regularly raising the voice of the common people, be it the farmers, loco pilots or sanitation workers. Over the past weeks, Rahul has met two separate group of farmers, who are demanding a legal MSP for their produce, led a delegation of loco pilots to railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to raise their issues and met with sanitation workers including those suffering due to practice of manual scavenging in his Parliament office to listen to their grievances.
"The Modi government claims that the inhuman practice of manual scavenging has been ended in the country but sadly it continues in several parts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. The government needs to address the concerns of these people but first they have to admit that the problem is there," a senior AICC functionary said.
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