Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday alleged that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has little interest in ensuring the smooth functioning of Parliament and is instead focused on creating disruptions, claiming that certain NGOs have encouraged him with assurances that "good days" will return for his party.
In an interview with PTI during his visit to his Lok Sabha constituency Arunachal West, Rijiju said the government would not take any additional measures to ease tensions in the House, asserting that he had already made repeated efforts to restore normalcy.
"Rahul Gandhi is not interested in running the House. He is interested in making issues. Rahul Gandhi was tutored by some NGOs that your days will come. But their days won't come. In the next elections, their tally (in the Lok Sabha) will further go down," he told PTI in an interview here.
The minister said he had tried to defuse the impasse by reaching out to senior Congress leaders, including K C Venugopal, but without success. He added that the ruling alliance did not have a problem with the opposition stalling proceedings, as the responsibility to cooperate lay with them.
"We are not going to do anything extra to placate the Congress. The Congress is frustrated because the party is losing election after election. They are desperate to change the situation," he said.
Rijiju further claimed that not all opposition parties support the Congress’s strategy, stating that smaller parties have expressed dissatisfaction over losing their allotted speaking time due to repeated adjournments.
"All opposition is not with the Congress. Smaller parties are not being able to utilise their respective party time. Smaller parties are unhappy with Rahul Gandhi. Some of them have not even signed the motion against the Speaker," he said.
He also noted that members from other political parties had conveyed to him their desire for the House to function without disruptions.
The first half of the Budget Session in the Lok Sabha was marked by frequent disruptions and adjournments after Gandhi was disallowed by the Chair from quoting an article based on excerpts of former Army chief M M Naravane's "unpublished memoir", which referred to the India-China conflict of 2020.
During the session, eight opposition members were suspended for the remainder of the Budget Session over unruly conduct in the House.
The opposition also submitted a No-confidence Motion seeking the removal of Speaker Om Birla, alleging that he had acted in a "blatantly partisan" manner. The Speaker subsequently decided to step aside from presiding over the House hours after the motion was submitted, in which he was accused of acting in a "blatantly partisan" manner.
The Budget Session began with the President's address to a joint sitting of Parliament on January 28 and went into recess on February 12. The Union Budget 2026 was presented on February 1. The session is scheduled to reconvene on March 9 and conclude on April 2.