Setting the stage for a stormy start Wednesday to the month-long winter session of Parliament, Opposition leaders met in New Delhi Monday evening to draw up a common strategy to take on the government over its move to demonetise higher denomination currency notes and the problems being faced by people. But the very issue which brought them together also revealed divisions in the Opposition ranks. What did, however, become clear that the Opposition parties Congress, JD(U), Trinamool Congress, CPM, CPI, RJD, JMM and the YSR Congress, which are likely to be joined by BSP, DMK and possibly SP for another meeting Tuesday will not let Parliament function and try to put the BJP-led government on the mat over the demonetisation issue.

Sources said Trinamool’s Sudip Bandopadhyay and Derek O’Brien told the meeting that they had already taken a November 16 appointment with the President. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad is learnt to have asked them who did they take the appointment for. When Trinamool leaders said it was for all Opposition parties, Azad asked them how could they take an appointment on behalf of other parties.


But after the meeting, Azad said: “We have decided to work together.”


The meeting was also attended by Congress floor leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, its deputy leader in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma, CPI’s D Raja RJD’s Prem Chand Gupta, JMM’s Sushil Kumar and M Rajamohan Reddy of YSR Congress.

Asked if all Opposition parties would be joining the Trinamool march to the President, Azad said: “The question is not who is going with whom or who is leading. The question is when to go, which date to go, whether to go mid-session or later.”


He said Opposition parties had come out with separate statements on the demonetisation issue, but they were one “now”. He said Opposition leaders would meet again Tuesday because some parties could not make it Monday. These included the NCP, DMK, SP and BSP.


“It was a preliminary meeting where we reached a broad consensus,” Raja said after the meeting.


“We are all against black money,” Azad told the media, underlining that he wished to flag two points. One, the way the government had brought about demonetisation of high-value notes “by leaking it first to its own party before the deadline. The country has been betrayed (desh ko dhokha diya)… This has never happened before”. Two, he said, “crores of people” have been subjected to a lot of hardship because “there is no currency and ATMs are not working”.