New Delhi: A political debate broke out on Friday after the Congress claimed that its top two Leaders of Opposition (LoPs), Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha and Mallikarjun Kharge in the Rajya Sabha, were not invited to the state banquet hosted for visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. The party also criticised its own MP, Shashi Tharoor, for accepting an invitation to the event.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh confirmed that both Gandhi and Kharge had been left out. “There has been speculation about whether the two Leaders of Opposition were invited. They have not been invited,” he said.
Party spokesperson Pawan Khera accused the government of violating long-standing protocol. Speaking to media agencies, he said, “This government is known for breaking protocol. There is no invite to both the LoPs. It is surprising, but by now it should not surprise us.”
Khera also took a jab at Tharoor for choosing to attend the banquet. Tharoor, a senior Congress MP and chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, was invited and publicly confirmed he would attend. “If our leaders are not invited and we are invited, we need to question our own conscience,” Khera said. He added that both the decision to invite select leaders and the decision to accept such invitations were “questionable”.
Tharoor, however, maintained that his invitation was part of an older parliamentary practice. He said there was a time when the head of the external affairs committee was always invited to such events, but that tradition had stopped in recent years. “It has been resumed. I have been invited, yes. I will definitely go,” he told reporters in Parliament.
Asked about the exclusion of the LoPs, Tharoor said he had no information about how the guest list was drawn up. “In earlier days, there used to be wide representation, including LoPs and members from different parties. It conveyed a good impression,” he said. “This is all organised by the government and Rashtrapati Bhavan. I don’t know the basis.”
The issue surfaced a day after Rahul Gandhi alleged that the government often discourages visiting foreign leaders from meeting the Leader of the Opposition. He said this long-standing parliamentary tradition was followed during both the Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments, but is now routinely ignored.
“Normally, foreign dignitaries meet the LoP. But these days, when they come—or when I travel abroad—the government suggests that they should not meet the Leader of the Opposition,” Gandhi said.
Putin’s two-day visit to India, aimed at strengthening bilateral ties, has now also triggered a fresh round of questions about protocol, political courtesy, and the role of the Opposition in major diplomatic events.