On Wednesday morning, 19 opposition parties, including the Congress,, TMC and the Delhis ruling Aam Aadmi Party, announced that they were going to boycott this weekend’s inauguration of Delhi’s new Parliament building and condemned the “authoritarian prime minister and his government.”
Despite their disagreements with the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, the opposition parties stated that they were willing to “sink our differences and mark this occasion,” but they added that prime minister Narendra Modi’s decision to inaugurate the Parliament building by himself and completely ignore president (Droupadi) Murmu is “not only a grave insult but a direct assault on our democracy.”