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Rahul Gandhi's 'bomb' explodes: Why the Opposition split ahead of meeting with PM Modi

Opposition parties accused Rahul of breaking an understanding by going alone to meet the PM and fixing an appointment with President Pranabh Mukherjee in his own name.

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A steady and unified Opposition that derailed almost all official business during the Winter Session of Parliament —for the past 20 days— came to a cropper on the last day, when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

Opposition parties accused Rahul of breaking an understanding by going alone to meet the PM and fixing an appointment with President Pranabh Mukherjee in his own name.

Speaking to DNA, a senior Left party leader revealed that a day ahead of the session of Parliament, it was decided that no one would be the leader of the coordinated Opposition programmes and even while marching towards Rashtrapati Bhawan and during sit-ins, the leaders would form a horizontal row to give equal prominence to all leaders.

Protesting at the Congress' conduct, the Left, DMK, AIADMK, SP, BSP and the NCP, at the last minute, dropped out of the protest march. That left Congress president Sonia Gandhi to lead a whittled-down Opposition delegation of 15 parties to meet the President.

Among prominent parties only JD(U) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) joined the delegation. While the Congress said that the meeting with the PM was fixed to raise the issue of farmers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Punjab and hand over thousands of signatures collected by the party for waiving loan arrears and seeking other reliefs, other Opposition parties were not impressed.

"We will never know what transpired at the meeting since it was between the Congress leaders and the PM. It was a clear violation of understanding," said P Karunakaran, CPI(M) member from Kerala. NCP leader Praful Patel said: "We were together in Parliament. It would be better if they would have taken everyone along. Outside the house, everyone has a different role."

Sources said that it was decided at a meeting that all Opposition leaders would meet Modi over the issue of farmers, since the SP and the BSP were primary stakeholders in UP. BSP chief Mayawati and SP leaders later expressed their anger over Rahul meeting the PM alone.

CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury said that there was no use knocking on the doors of the President. "Our strategy was deferred as we felt the President could do nothing in the matter and we should have gone to the public instead," he said.

The Left and other parties were firmly behind Rahul Gandhi when he declared two days ago that he has information on the "personal corruption" committed by PM Modi, a claim that was dismissed by the BJP as "the joke of the year."

Rahul delayed his flight to Goa in order to first meet Modi. In a memorandum to the PM, the Congress highlighted an acute agrarian distress and the plight of the farmers suffering for the last two years due to two consecutive droughts, unseasonal rains, and floods.

As a relief, he sought halving the farmers' electricity bills and asked the PM to fulfil its promise to provide higher Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for the crops.

During the meeting, the Prime Minister told Rahul: "We should always meet like this." Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge responded by saying, "Even if our hearts don't meet, we can at least cooperate and shake hands."

In a memorandum to the President, Congress and other smaller parties asked his intervention to save parliamentary democracy, which they said was being destroyed by the Modi government by preventing a debate on demonetization.

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