'Caste census, joint public meeting, seat sharing discussed in 1st meeting of coordination committee of INDIA'

New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) decided to hold its first joint public meeting in Bhopal and also discussed the seat sharing and caste census in the country during the first meeting of the coordination committee here on Wednesday, Congress leader K.C. Venugopal said.

Addressing a press conference after the meeting, the Congress General Secretary, Organisation, said: "A total of 12 members of the coordination committee today attended the meeting as Trinamool Congress’s Abhishek Banerjee could not attend the meeting, due to summon issued by the Enforcement Directorate arising out of the vendetta politics of the BJP and the Prime Minister."

He said that during the meeting it wad decided to start the process for seat sharing and that the member parties will hold the talks and decide at the earliest.

Venugopal said, the coordination committee also agreed to take up the issue of caste census.

He said that it was also decided to hold the first public meeting of the INDIA bloc in Bhopal in first week of October and in several parts of the country subsequently.

He said that the first public meeting will be held on the issue of inflation, unemployment and corruption of the BJP government.

The coordination committee authorised sub group of media to decide on the name of the anchors on whose shows none of the INDIA parties will send the representative.

Besides Pawar and Venugopal, the meeting was also attended by RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, JD-U’s Sanjay Jha, in place of party chief Lalan Singh, CPI’s D. Raja, DMK’s T.R. Baalu, PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti, Shiv Sena-UBT’s Sanjay Raut, Samajwadi Party’s Javed Ali, AAP’s Raghav Chadha, JMM's Hemant Soren and NC’s Omar Abdullah.

INDIA bloc, during their third meeting in Mumbai, had formed the 14 member coordination committee. CPI-M is yet to name any party leader for the committee.