Govt meets floor leaders of parties ahead of Parliament's Winter session

An all-party meeting convened by the government ahead of the Winter session of Parliament is underway here on Sunday where the opposition is likely to rake up various issues, including Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, the Delhi blast and foreign policy matters that it wants to raise in both Houses.

While Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and his deputy Arjun Ram Meghwal are representing the government, the opposition is being represented by Jairam Ramesh, Gaurav Gogoi, Pramod Tiwari (Congress), T R Baalu (DMK), Derek O'Brien (TMC) and E T Mohammed Bashir (IUML).

Union minister J P Nadda represents the BJP. He is the BJP president as well as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha.

Manoj Jha of the RJD, Harsimrat Kaur of the SAD and Sanjay Jha of the JD(U) are also attending the meet.

The customary meeting has been convened to ensure smooth functioning of the two Houses during the session where several new bills are planned to be introduced.

The Winter session commences on Monday and will conclude on December 19.

There will be a total of 15 sittings in the session which has been dubbed as a "brief session" by the opposition.

Usually, Parliament sessions have 20 sittings.  Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said the all-party meeting called by the Modi government to discuss the agenda for the Winter session of Parliament is a mere formality.

Ramesh, who attended the meeting, said the Modi government has made its intentions clear by listing a subject for a short duration discussion without any consultation with the Opposition.

In a post on X, Ramesh said, "The all-party meeting called by the Modi government to discuss the agenda for the winter session of Parliament starting tomorrow is a mere formality."  "This session of 15 days will be the shortest in Parliamentary history. The Modi government has listed 13 Bills for passage. Of these one replaces an ordinance and two have gone through a committee of the Lok Sabha. So ten Bills have not been examined by the Standing Committee concerned," he said.

Of course, it is possible that a Bill not listed at present will suddenly get introduced towards the later part of the short session, Ramesh said.

"The Modi government has made its intentions clear by listing a subject for a short duration discussion WITHOUT any consultation with the Opposition," he said on X.