As Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday had a meeting with the leaders of all political parties to discuss New Delhi’s G20 presidency, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge asked him to leverage the clout to deter China from carrying out incursions into the territory of India.
Modi said that India’s G20 presidency belonged to the entire nation, and was a unique opportunity to showcase India’s strengths to the entire world. The prime minister also referred to the global curiosity and attraction towards India, which had further increased the potential of the nation’s G20 presidency.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi were present in the meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Kharge suggested that the Modi Government should also utilize the G20 presidency of India to help create a system that could help in repatriating fugitive economic offenders, who had fled from their respective countries.
With the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) projecting India’s G20 presidency and the opportunity to host the summit of the bloc in September 2023 as an achievement of the Modi Government, Kharge subtly reminded that New Delhi had seen such congregations of world leaders in the past too. He particularly referred to the Non-Aligned Movement’s conclave in New Delhi in 1983, when the leaders and representatives of nearly 100 nations had assembled in New Delhi. He, according to the sources, also referred to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in New Delhi in the same year, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government had hosted the leaders of 42 nations in New Delhi.
The meeting was also attended by several Chief Ministers, including West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, who said that the G20 presidency of India was a matter of pride for the entire nation, not for any particular party.
The Trinamool Congress supremo earlier on the day questioned the use of the lotus, both the national flower and the BJP’s poll symbol, as the logo of the G20 presidency of India.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader, M K Stalin, and Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader, Arvind Kejriwal, attended the meeting.
Stalin congratulated Modi on India assuming the G20 presidency for 2023 and tacitly nudged him to “use the opportunity to promote the values of peace, non-violence, harmony, and equal justice all over the world”.
"The credibility of the theme announced by the PM is crucially dependent upon creating a society and a political structure which is based on equality for all," CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said, according to a statement released by the party. He was referring to the 'One-Earth-One-Family' theme of India's G20 presidency.
"The current alarming levels of communal polarization based on vicious campaigns of hate, terror and violence destroy the foundations of the declaration announced by the PM. Our economic slowdown is plunging deeper with alarmingly growing levels of unemployment and poverty," he said, according to the statement.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde also attended the meeting.