People want us to perform duty: PM Narendra Modi

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked all parties to cooperate in the passage of key bills to be taken up in the interim budget session. At an allparty meeting on Thursday to discuss the agenda of the session that has 46 bills listed for discussion and passage over 14 days, Modi asked parties to give importance to national issues.

“The government’s focus lies on issues of national importance and finding solutions to problems of the people. The country expects from all of us to perform our duties as parliamentarians and we must deliver to the expectations of the people,” he said.

The opposition raised the issue of rising unemployment at the meeting and may demand a discussion on the issue during the session. Parties also suggested that the government should not bring contentious bills in the session that will have only 10 sittings. The government plans bills on triple talaq, companies and Indian Medical Council on which ordinances have been issued.


The PM and the home minister assured the opposition parties that “this will be an interim budget session”. Opposition leaders see their statements as a clarification after some of them expressed unhappiness over parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Goel’s remark that “budget is a budget” at a meeting of floor leaders called by the Speaker on Wednesday. Congress leader of the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, had told Sumitra Mahajan then that his party would oppose any move to present a full budget before the elections.

“PM Modi has conveyed to the opposition that his government will present an interim budget…We should take up only those bills which are not controversial,” Rajya Sabha opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad later told reporters. BJD’s Bhartruhari Mahtab’s demand that the government must introduce the women’s reservation bill received support from Congress, Trinamool, AIADMK, NCP and Left.