APCC leader slams BJP’s ‘inability’ to break deadlock in Parliament

APCC vice-president Kolanukonda Shivaji
| Photo Credit: File Photo

Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) vice-president Kolanukonda Shivaji on Tuesday (December 10) said neither the BJP nor the NDA-alliance parties had leaders capable of breaking the ongoing deadlock in Parliament.

In a statement, Mr. Shivaji recalled a similar stalemate before the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014 when senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held multiple rounds of one-on-one talks with then Opposition BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Venkaiah Naidu to break the deadlock.

“Today such political stalwarts are not there in the BJP,” he said.

Blaming Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairperson Jagdeep Dhankar, the Congress leader said, “He (Mr. Dhankar) is part of the problem, while the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju keeps adding fuel to the fire.”

Referring to the stalemate in both Houses of Parliament following protests by leaders of the opposition parties who held that their request for a discussion on varied issues was being ignored by the treasury benches, Mr. Shivaji said that a consensus in this regard had been eluding for last three weeks.

He demanded that senior BJP leaders such as Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Shivraj Singh Chauhan should hold talks with the INDIA bloc leaders for normalcy to return.