The Congress on Saturday sought to put the Narendra Modi government on the defensive by demanding a condolence resolution in Parliament on the death of more than 700 farmers during the year-long movement against the three farm laws that will now be repealed.

“On the eve of the coming Parliament session, I would sincerely request you that as a mark of respect towards our annadata (food-providers), the House may unanimously pass a condolence resolution for the farmers who lost their lives during the farmer agitation. The passing of the resolution in the House will convey our gratitude for the sacrifices that our farmer brethren have given to the nation,” the party’s Lok Sabha leader, Adhir Chowdhury, wrote in a letter to Speaker Om Birla.

After a year of ignoring what has turned out to be one of the most inspiring movements in history, the Prime Minister suddenly announced the repeal of the three laws on November 19. The government plans to table the repeal bill in Parliament on the very first day of the winter session beginning on Monday, hoping to quickly bring the curtains down on an issue on which it has had to capitulate.

But the Congress is in no mood to allow the focus to shift from the government’s mishandling of the farm protest and a whole gamut of other matters.

Neither the Prime Minister nor any of his ministers has even mentioned the deaths of the farmers, let alone condole them, and his government had in previous sessions refused to consider the Congress plea for a condolence resolution in the House.

In February, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had in a speech in Parliament noted this refusal to pay respects to the dead farmers, who then numbered around 200, and asked members of the House to join him in observing a two-minute silence in their memory.

The Congress is supporting the farmers’ demand for a legal guarantee on minimum support price (MSP) for all farm produce, which the government appears reluctant to concede at this stage.

The Congress plans to press for this demand in the upcoming session, besides protesting against the continuance of minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni whose son is an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri massacre of farmers.

The chances of a turmoil in the House will considerably diminish if the government brings the bill to repeal the three laws on the first day as the Opposition will have to cooperate, BJP managers believe.

The Congress plans to raise several other issues, including its demand for compensation of Rs 4 lakh for the family of every Covid dead, inflation, Chinese aggression and rising unemployment. The leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, has called a meeting of friendly parties on Monday.

But Opposition unity, demonstrated so powerfully in the last session, seems to be in disarray this time. Trinamul MPs will not attend the meeting called by Kharge, and it is unlikely that a consensus will emerge among other parties on floor strategy because the Samajwadi Party too is trying to keep a distance from the Congress in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh elections.

“Opposition unity isn’t the catchphrase this time,” conceded a senior Rajya Sabha MP, lamenting that “partisan aspirations” appeared to have overridden the larger national objective of fighting the BJP.

This MP said: “We can’t say the Congress alone is to be blamed for the situation but there is no denying the fact that the party has to share the blame for this confused state of affairs. The leadership issue has cropped up because of casual handling of Opposition unity.”

Another leader, however, countered this perception, saying: “The Opposition will remain united and the Trinamul Congress may be alone in charting its own separate course. We are sorry to say that Trinamul is behaving in an obnoxious manner. We all have our problems with the Congress, the party has doubtless not functioned as it should have. But we can’t unsettle Modi with such a fickle mindset. If the Congress cannot be the fulcrum of Opposition unity, Trinamul certainly can’t.”

Rahul variant alert

Rahul on Saturday asked the government to take the new coronavirus variant seriously.

The Congress leader tweeted: “New variant is a serious threat. High time GOI gets serious about providing vaccine security to our countrymen. Bad vaccination figures can’t be hidden for long behind one man’s photo.”

He posted a chart with the tweet that showed only 31.19 per cent of the total population had been fully vaccinated in India.

It also showed that an average of 6.8 million daily doses were being administered while 23.3 million shots needed to be given every day to fulfil the Centre’s deadline to inoculate the entire adult population by year-end.