In the BJP parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday, several ‘bills’, which are yet to be tabled in the House were to discussed. Also some strict directives were issued by the party for its parliamentarians, including ‘no foreign trips’ during session and ‘no skipping’ of important party meetings especially the weekly meeting with Arun Jaitley with the party spokespersons.
Sources said, parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu asked his party colleagues to compromise with the foreign trips and to adhere with the instructions of Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
Some of the party spokespersons (out of 320 parliamentarians and some of them are ministers now) were warned for not attending the weekly Monday meeting with Jaitley. ‘They were categorically asked to attend the Monday meeting because the report of the meeting will be sent to prime minister Narendra Modi,’ party insider said.
It was learnt that Naidu has told the MPs that it is embarrassing for him if someone comes with a request of a foreign trip during the parliament session. ‘My humble request is please don’t ask permission for foreign trips during the session,’ he was reportedly said in the meeting.
Recently, wary of much hue and cry over foreign junkets by political leaders allegedly on tax-payers money, Naidu has reportedly turned down the request of five BJP MPs to fly abroad. Sources said, BJP leaders, including Tarun Vijay, Ashwani Kumar, Anurag Thakur, Sanjay Jaiswal and Kamlesh Paswan has informed the parliament secretariat that they want to fly abroad.