RJD, BSP to skip dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for newly elected Members of Parliament

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has said that she will not be attending the dinner hosted by Prime Minister Modi for all the newly elected Members of Parliament in Delhi on 20 June. Members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal are also giving the dinner a skip, protesting over the deaths of over a hundred children in Muzaffarpur due to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES). 

The invitation was extended by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi to all members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and the dinner will be hosted at the Ashoka Hotel in Delhi.  

RJD leader Misa Bharti told reporters that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) will not be attending the dinner called by Prime Minister today because of deaths of children in Muzaffarpur (due to AES). 

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This is the first time the Prime Minister will meet the parliamentarians after the polls in May 2019. Earlier, the Prime Minister chaired an All Party Meeting to discuss the proposed concept of "one nation, one poll", that aims to hold simultaneous polls in the country. Telangana Rashtra Samithi's (TRS) K Chandrashekar Rao, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's (DMK) MK Stalin, Trinamool Congress' (TMC) Mamata Banerjee, Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP)Mayawati, Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal, Telugu Desam Party's (TDP) Chandrababu Naidu  and Indian National Congress' (INC) Rahul Gandhi are some of the main opposition leaders who skipped the meet. 

BSP supremo Mayawati said that had the discussion been about Electronic Voting Machines(EVM), she would have attended the meeting. Whereas, AAP addressed a letter to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi informing him that the party did not believe in the proposed concept as there was lack of clarity and absence of white paper, or a document which envisioned the plan. 

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