The Aam Aadmi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM were left out of the all-party meeting chaired by Narendra Modi on Friday to discuss the situation at the India-China border for reasons not spelt out by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Although the AAP, the ruling party in Delhi, the RJD, the main Opposition in Bihar, and Hyderabad MP Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen articulated their dismay, several hours before the videoconference, at being left out, no effort appeared to have been made by the PMO to reach out to them and send a last-minute invite.
This did not surprise the parties with one leader pointing out that it is just not in the DNA of the ruling dispensation to admit a mistake and make amends.
In a letter of protest to Modi that was also shared on social media, RJD Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha expressed deep anguish at his party being left out of the meeting despite being the principal Opposition force in Bihar and also the largest party in the Assembly.
In the absence of any clarity on possible criteria for the meeting, there was intense speculation, with various purported parameters doing the rounds.
Referring to one of the reasons being unofficially cited that only parties with a minimum of five members in Parliament had been invited to the meeting, Jha pointed out that the RJD, helmed by Lalu Prasad, has five members in the Rajya Sabha. Jha mentioned in the letter that parties with less than five MPs had been invited, but he did not name any.
The CPI, which has three MPs, is one such party.
“The blatant nature of this exclusion will be a matter of record as several parties with lesser number of members have been called to participate in the said meeting. The people of Bihar and history might be persuaded to believe that this error was inadvertent but for that to happen it must be rectified as soon as possible,” Jha wrote in the letter.
Contacted by The Telegraph in the evening while the meeting was on, Jha said no one in the government tried to reach out to him after he made his protest letter public.
Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, which has of late had a better working relationship with the Modi government, expressed disappointment at its exclusion from the meeting but said it would be committed to the outcome.
Sanjay Singh, Rajya Sabha MP of the AAP which has four members in Parliament, said at a media conference: “Not giving the country correct information on the border dispute is a big betrayal of the country.”
“.... The Centre has to explain why it hid information from the country…. The sacrifice of India’s bravehearts demands that the Centre immediately take back the land occupied by China.
“On a serious issue like national security, the BJP government at the Centre should take everyone along. It is unfortunate for a democracy not to call a three-time chief minister for a discussion on this important subject.”
The AIMIM’s lone Lok Sabha MP, Owaisi, too, shot off a letter to the Prime Minister in which he expressed disappointment at being left out and questioned the purported criteria, which according to him were five Lok Sabha MPs, at least one Union cabinet minister or recognition as a national party.
Some sources claimed that all key parties from the Northeast, irrespective of their representation in Parliament, had been invited.
While none of the three parties expected their colleagues in other Opposition parties to raise the issue at the meeting given the gravity of the situation facing the country, former BJP veteran and minister Yashwant Sinha tweeted: “It is low level politics not to invite RJD and AAP to the all party meeting on the border clash with China. It is shocking.”
