NEW DELHI: The Centre has convened an all-party meeting on Sunday, a day ahead of the commencement of the Monsoon Session of Parliament, as it seeks cooperation from opposition parties to ensure the smooth functioning of both Houses. The meeting, a long-standing parliamentary convention before every session, is scheduled to begin at 11 am in the main committee room of parliament house annexe.The Monsoon Session will commence on Monday and continue till August 13. The government is expected to outline its legislative agenda, while Opposition parties are set to flag a range of political, economic and governance-related issues.Ahead of the meeting, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Tiruchi Siva said all political parties would present the issues they intend to raise during the session.”Before every session, the government convenes a meeting with all party leaders and floor leaders. They discuss how the House will function and which bills are to be taken up. Every party expresses the issues they want to raise on the floor of the House. It has been a long-standing convention that the Prime Minister used to attend such meetings,” Siva told ANI.Referring to the Prime Minister’s absence from recent all-party meetings, he added, “Nowadays, the Prime Minister does not attend; only the Defence Minister attends these meetings. We have reposed our confidence that Parliament will function democratically. Every party will express its views..”Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju has also written to rebel Trinamool Congress MPs Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, inviting them to the meeting. In his letter, Rijiju sought cooperation from all political parties for the smooth functioning of parliament and requested both leaders, including Dastidar in her capacity as the party’s chief whip, to attend the meeting.The invitations come amid significant political realignments ahead of the session. Twenty Trinamool Congress MPs have joined the National Citizens Party of India, while six Lok Sabha MPs from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) have joined the Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde. Earlier, seven Aam Aadmi Party MPs in the Rajya Sabha joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.Several contentious issues are expected to dominate the Monsoon Session, including the alleged NEET-UG paper leak, the removal of climate activist Sonam Wangchuk from Jantar Mantar protest site and alleged irregularities in donations made for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya among other issues.The Congress has also accused the government of attempting to engineer a two-thirds majority in Parliament through political defections.Following a meeting of the party’s Parliamentary Strategy Group chaired by Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi earlier this week, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the party had finalised its strategy for the session.Ramesh alleged that the Centre could once again attempt to introduce the Delimitation Bill.”We are expecting the Union Home Minister to try to bring the Delimitation Bill once again after it got badly defeated in the Lok Sabha on April 17.” He reiterated the party’s opposition to the proposed legislation.He also questioned the government’s parliamentary numbers. “The government is still well short of the two-thirds majority mark and is unlikely to reach it, particularly in the Lok Sabha.”Accusing the ruling alliance of engineering political defections, Ramesh said the split in the Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) amounted to “an insult to the Constitution”.He said the party would also press for the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the alleged Neet-UG paper leak, raise what it described as the “E-20 scam”, and seek a discussion on India’s foreign policy, particularly concerning China, the United States, West Asia and Pakistan.The upcoming session is also expected to introduc five new Bills, including the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, Income Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2026, Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Bill, 2026, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Amendment) Bill, 2026, and the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan Bill, 2025, which includes the proposed 130th Constitutional Amendment.
