Sources said notices have been given in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha seeking suspension of all business to discuss the situation in Delhi.(Express photo: Praveen Khanna/File)

THE SECOND leg of the Budget session of Parliament that begins Monday is likely to start on a stormy note with the Congress deciding to raise the issue of the riots in northeast Delhi last week and demand the resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah.

Top Congress leaders met at party chief Sonia Gandhi’s residence to decide the strategy to be adopted in Parliament. Sources said notices have been given in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha seeking suspension of all business to discuss the situation in Delhi.

“We will certainly raise the Delhi issue vigorously. The unprecedented communal violence which we have seen in the heart of the Capital… is an utter failure of this government… it is because of their laxity, if not conspiracy,” Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, told The Indian Express.

He said the Congress was in touch with other opposition parties for evolving a common strategy. “We will demand the resignation of the Home Minister,” he said. The first signal that the Congress would be aggressive over the violence in Delhi came last week when the party’s Working Committee said there was deliberate inaction on the part of the Central and State governments. The CWC had argued that the responsibility for the riots must be borne by the Central government and particularly the Home Minister.

A day later, a high-level Congress delegation led by Sonia Gandhi met President Ram Nath Kovind and urged him to call for the removal of the Home Minister, saying he “abdicated his duty and allowed the situation to escalate through his inaction”.

The Opposition, so far, has not come together on the Delhi riots. The Congress, for instance, has attacked both the BJP government and the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, accusing both of inaction.

The other parties, however, have not attacked the Arvind Kejriwal government. It was perhaps because of this that the Congress approached the President alone while a group of other parties, which included the AAP, CPM, CPI, NCP, DMK and the RJD, wrote to the President separately. The Trinamool Congress too has been silent on the Kejriwal government, and the SP and BSP too. It is to be seen how the opposition parties forge a common strategy in Parliament against this backdrop.

Meanwhile, in a series of tweets posted hours after Shah’s speech in Kolkata, senior Congress leader and former Union minister P Chidambaram wrote: “Home Minister says that no one belonging to the minorities will be affected by CAA. If that is correct, then he should tell the country who will be affected by CAA. If nobody will be affected by CAA, as it stands at present, then why did the government pass the law?

“If the CAA is intended to benefit all minorities (no one will be affected says the HM), then why were Muslims excluded from the list of minorities mentioned in the Act?”