The Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) too has decided to stay away from the inauguration of the new Parliament building by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.
Highly placed BRS sources told The Hindu on Wednesday night that the party did not want to make an issue out of the ongoing controversy over not inviting the President for the inauguration.
“We are not attending Sunday’s inauguration. The party has decided not to speak on the issue,” a top BRS functionary remarked.
It is understood that Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Board B. Vinod Kumar and BRS leader in Lok Sabha and Khammam MP Nama Nageshwar Rao met Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday evening to discuss the issue. Though the meeting lasted over an hour, the leaders were unwilling to be quoted on what transpired.
Meanwhile, 19 Opposition parties in a joint statement said that there was no value in a new building when the “soul of democracy has been sucked out from the Parliament. The parties had also objected to President Droupadi Murmu being sidelined for the event, which they claimed was ‘a grave insult but a direct assault on our democracy, which demands a commensurate response”.
Interestingly, BRS was not a party to the joint statement. In fact, BRS Rajya Sabha member K. Keshava Rao, it is believed, had politely turned down any move to sign the joint statement. Mr. Rao, while not attending the meeting, said: “We are still discussing the issue and will take a decision tomorrow.”
