NEW DELHI, 24 July— Both houses of parliament adjourned yesterday, immediately after the start of a five-week monsoon session, in memory of slain Nepal King Birendra.
Lok Sabha (lower house) Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi and Rajya Sabha (upper house) Chairman Krishna Kant adjourned the houses after reading out brief obituary references. Both houses will begin work today.
Birendra and nine members of his family were gunned down at their palace on June 1.
Balayogi said: “This house recalls with deep appreciation the invaluable role played by King Birendra in strengthening relations with India and building regional cooperation.”
In the Rajya Sabha, tributes were also paid to two former members — noted writer R.K. Narayan, who died in May, and film thespian Sivaji Ganesan, who died on Saturday.
Rajya Sabha MPs are mourned the death of 13 people, including six Hindu devotees, who were allegedly killed by activists in Kashmir on Saturday.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who is expected to set the tone for this session with a statement today about his summit with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, arrived in the house 15 minutes before it opened. He exchanged pleasantries with opposition leaders.
Vajpayee’s rivals, led by the main opposition Congress party, last week backed the government’s resolve to continue negotiations with Islamabad but said it had been ill-prepared on such crucial issues as the Kashmir dispute. They said they would seek a debate on what went wrong at the talks. To work out a joint strategy in the parliament against the government, the Congress President Sonia Gandhi extended a “tea invitation” to senior opposition leaders.
Opposition parties have identified a number of issues on which they would seek to put the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on the mat.
These include the Agra summit, a mutual fund scam in Unit Trust of India (UTI) and the continuing unrest in the northeastern state of Manipur over New Delhi’s truce with a rebel Naga group. Tehelka expose will also surface, so will issues like recall of the Tamil Nadu Governor Fathima Bibi.
“The finance minister has to answer how the government allowed over half the savings of over 20 million people belonging to the middle class to go up in smoke overnight,” Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia told the Indian Express daily.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) has demanded Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha resign over the issue and the Congress has called for a high-level investigation.
The monsoon session was due to have 29 sittings instead of the usual 22 to make up for days lost during the last session which was paralyzed over an arms scandal that led to the resignation of the defense minister and the leaders of two parties in the ruling coalition.
