Political parties meet before Parliament session

    New Delhi: With clear indications of a stormy winter session of Parliament beginning November 24, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday convened an all-party meeting seeking an assurance for a smooth functioning of the House. Several Union ministers along with members of Left parties, who provide crucial support to the ruling UPA coalition government, and opposition leaders, attended the meeting. Chatterjee said that leaders of all parties had assured him complete cooperation to ensure smooth functioning of Parliament. "There are many important issues which parties, particularly the opposition will try to raise, it is my job to find time for all of them. Discussion on all matters will be allowed subject to rules and availability of time. I have been assured by all honourable members present today that there will be full cooperation from their side," he told reporters after the meeting.

    Senior BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra said they would train their guns on the treasury benches on a number of issues. "There is the Volcker report, Mitrohkin papers (KGB report), Delhi bomb blast, Jehanabad jail break, ISI agents being caught, matters of foreign affairs, we have given notice to argue on all these issues. There are as many as 40-45 notices given by the NDA. The NDA will decide which issue is to be given importance and how to go about that. But we promise that Parliament will rocked this time, no doubt about that," Malhotra said. The biggest embarrassment for the Congress-led coalition is likely to be the Iraqi oil-for-food scam allegedly involving bribery and illegal payments to the then Saddan Hussein regime. The scandal has already claimed former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh after the Paul Volcker committee named him and the Congress party as beneficiaries of the UN-sponsored programme. The Mitrokhin papers, which allege that the KGB paid bribes to Congress and the Left politicians during former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's tenure, could be another source of embarrassment for the government.