During the all-party meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 4 on the subject of COVID-19 and distribution of vaccines, only parties with more than 10 members in Parliament will be allowed to speak; the smaller parties have to be silent participants, the party leaders have been informed.
The meeting has been called after Mr. Modi’s Saturday visit to three vaccine manufacturing facilities — Zydus in Ahmedabad, Serum Institute in Pune and Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad.
During the previous several videoconference meetings with Chief Ministers too, the Prime Minister’s Office had drafted the schedule in such a way that different States got to speak on different dates, instead of opting for an open discussion on the subject. With the 10-MP criteria, many regional parties will not get an opportunity to air their opinion, including Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party and the two Left parties, the CPI (M) and the CPI.
CPI Parliamentary Party leader Binoy Viswam has written a letter to Mr. Modi urging him to reconsider this decision of not allowing those with less than 10 MPs to speak in the meeting. Mr. Viswam said that in case the PMO found it impossible to accommodate the smaller parties, he wanted to put across his views on the subject. He pressed for increasing the testing facilities and also reducing the cost of RT PCR tests across the country. The CPI leader asked the Prime Minister to ensure that the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana was extended till May 2021.