Govt should have kept Christmas in mind before announcing parliament's winter session dates: Congress

By Ashoke Raj
New Delhi, [India], December 6 : After the all-party meeting held in Parliament on Tuesday, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary said that the government should have kept in mind festivals like Christmas before announcing dates for the Winter Session of Parliament.
The government called an all-party meeting ahead of Winter Session from December 7 to December 29. Soon after the all-party meeting started, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary appealed and demanded that Government should keep in mind the festive season too.
"When we celebrate festivals of Hindus and Muslims and others festival then why not Christian's (Christmas)... government should have kept this in mind before announcing the session dates," Adhir said.
Congress raised the issues in the all-party meeting and stressed about the total days of the session, "This winter session is only for 17 days and the listed item is high which is not enough in said days," he added.
Regarding the festival of Christman during the Winter Session, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi after the all-party meeting said, "This is a most unfortunate thing because we all know elections are the festival of democracy because two major states elections are going on... that is why we announced session from December 7 to December 29..."
"I condemn the allegation that we are ignoring Christmas. There will be a holiday on December 24 and 25, which means Christmas is on Sunday and we can all celebrate Christmas," Parliamentary Affairs Minister P Joshi said.
Winter session will be interesting this time as the first day of the winter session of the Parliament will begin with the Delhi MCD Election results on Dec 7 and the results of the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections will be released the next day on December 8. It is expected that the election results will dominate the first two days of the session.
Ahead of Winter Session, all parties are prepared to raise the issues of people. Congress called an important meeting on Saturday before the winter session of Parliament. The meeting was chaired by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. In this meeting which lasted for more than an hour, the Congress decided to raise important issues like inflation and unemployment in the Parliament.
It is expected that the main opposition Congress will try to address all these issues during the Winter Session.
The Winter Session of Parliament will begin from December 7 and continue till December 29.