A day after the Central Government initiated Jammu & Kashmir dialogue, a bevy of Central Ministers and top Opposition leaders collected at the lunch hosted by Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu here at his residence and informally deliberated on reconciliation process in the border State with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in attendance.
With about 45 Central Ministers and floor leaders of 20 parties in both Houses of Parliament interacting with each other at the lunch, the new step to stabilise the terror-affected border State became the talking point with Opposition leaders appreciating the Modi-Government’s appointment of former Director Intelligence Bureau Dineshwar Sharma as interlocutor for Kashmir, according to sources.
lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha Prof PJ Kurien, over 45 Union Ministers and about 20 floor leaders of Opposition and other parties in both the Houses of Parliament attended the lunch organised by the Vice-President .
Sources quoted one of the senior Ministers that he had attended several lunches and dinners in ‘Rashtrapati Bhawan’ but this was for the first time at the residence of the Vice-President .
Ministers who attended the lunch include Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Rambilas Paswan, Smriti Zubin Irani, Radhamohan Singh, Ashok Gajapati Raju, Anant Geete, Narendra Singh Tomar, Piyush Goyal, Harsimrat Kaur, Ramdas Athawale, Hardeep Singh Puri and Anupriya Patel.
Opposition leaders and floor leaders who participated include Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma (Congress), Derek O’Brien(TMC), Karunakaran (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI), Ramgopal Yadav (SP), Naresh Gujral (SAD), Navneet Krishnan (AIADMK), Kanimozhi (DMK), Tota Narasimham (TDP) and M Rajamohan Reddy (YSRCP).