On the last day of the monsoon session of the Parliament, the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) has scheduled a meeting at 10 a.m on Friday to decide its floor strategy on Rafale.
The party wants to make this as one of the main poll issues by portraying it as a "major case of corruption" by the Narendra Modi government.
Upset with Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu's decision not to allow the party to raise the issue on the floor of the House, the party has decided to skip his breakfast invitation this morning.
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Mr. Naidu has invited all party leaders to felicitate the new members who have joined the Upper House.
Top Congress leaders told The Hindu that the party's deputy leader Anand Sharma, who had raised the issue on Thursday, will once again push for a discussion/debate on Rafale in the Upper House.
In the Lok Sabha too, the party is likely to continue to raise the issue as it did on Thursday. Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge raised it soon after Zero Hour began and called it as one of the biggest “scams”. Slogans asking for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the Rafale deal was also brought up.
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Congress MPs seemed to have taken a cue from party chief Rahul Gandhi whose tweet on Thursday morning targeted the Prime Minister. “Here’s why HE couldn’t look me in the eye in Parliament, repeated by BJP people who have some guts,” tweeted Mr. Gandhi and tagged a news report of a press statement by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Prashant Bhusan that called the deal a “major scandal”.