New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi will not attend the first part of parliament’s monsoon session, which is starting from Monday, as she left for United States for her annual medical check-up today.
Randeep Singh Surejwala, general secretary of All India Congress Committee confirmed the information.
While Mrs Gandhi will remain out of the country for at least two weeks, her son, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who is accompanying her, is expected to return after a few days.
Mrs Gandhi has held meetings with her parliamentary strategy group and has given clear directives to raise key issues, in the house, that are affecting the nation. The party is likely to raise issues like economic slowdown and poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic by the Centre.
A day before her departure, Mrs Gandhi reshuffled positions in organisation in which “dissent” letter writers, who were seen to have questioned the leadership of the Gandhis last month, lost their posts.
The most notable of the leaders removed from the post of party general secretary is Ghulam Nabi Azad, the de-facto leader of a group of 23 senior party men, who had written to Mrs Gandhi seeking sweeping changes in the party’s organisational structure.
Sources have said that each house will be limited to four hours functioning per day; the Lok Sabha will convene first, followed by the Rajya Sabha.