Rahul Gandhi hosts breakfast meet with opposition party leaders, calls for unity

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday called for opposition unity, underlining that more it is united the more difficult it will be for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to suppress this voice.

Gandhi made the remarks at a breakfast meeting he hosted at Constitution Club in Delhi. The Congress leader had invited members of 17 opposition parties to the meeting to formulate a joint strategy to take on the government over various issues.

"The single motive to invite you is that we should unite.The more this voice unites, the more powerful it will become, the more difficult it will become for the BJP and RSS to suppress this voice," Gandhi said at the meeting.

"We should remember the foundation of unity and it is important that now we start to come up with the principles of this foundation," he told the opposition leaders.

After the meeting, Gandhi and other opposition leaders cycled to Parliament to highlight the issue of high fuel prices.

"As far as fuel prices are concerned, the people of India are struggling and if we cycle from here to Parliament, it will have an impact," Gandhi said.

The leaders of 15 parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC) which skipped the last such meeting, were present at today's gathering. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), however, skipped it.

Besides Gandhi, senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, KC Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh were also present at the meeting.

"Nobody in the government is listening. So we have decided to get together. The opposition is united and we are all together," Kharge said.

Among the leaders who attended the meeting were Kalyan Banerjee, Mohua Moitra (TMC), Sanjay Raut and Priyanka Chaturvedi (Shiv Sena), Manoj Jha (RJD), Kanimozhi (DMK) and Ram Gopal Yadav (SP).

Parliament has not been able to function due to ongoing protest by the opposition over alleged snooping issue, farmers' protest and other things. The opposition has demanded a discussion in Parliament and a Supreme Court monitored probe in the snooping matter.

The government is, however, saying that this is a non-issue and does not want it to be discussed in Parliament.