The Congress issued a three-line whip to all its MPs on Saturday, directing them to be present in Parliament during the last day of the budget session of Parliament.

A three-line whip is a strict instruction to attend and vote according to the party’s position, a breach of which would normally have serious consequences.

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Before the session convenes today, INDIA bloc parliamentary leaders will meet at the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge’s office in the Parliament premises.

Today is the last session of the ongoing budget session of Parliament.

This is the last session of the current Lok Sabha before the general elections, which are likely to be held in April-May this year.

The budget session was initially scheduled to conclude on February 9 and has been extended by a day.

Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha will on Saturday hold a short-duration discussion on the White Paper put out by the Centre and on the Pran Pratistha of Ram Lalla.

BJP parliamentarians Sushil Kumar Modi and Prakash Javadekar will raise the discussion on the White Paper, informing its impact on the lives of the people of the country.

The nearly 60-page White Paper, which was tabled in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha by Sitharaman on Thursday, claimed that the banking crisis was one of the most important and infamous legacies of the UPA government.

The White Paper said that the UPA government abandoned reforms after coming to power in 2004 and that it failed to build on the strong foundation laid by the previous BJP-led NDA government.

It said the economy grew fast between 2004 and 2008 largely due to the “lagged effects” of the reforms of the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Even as the country was standing at the cusp of emerging as a powerful economy, little was done by the UPA government to build upon the strong foundation laid by the previous NDA government.

The UPA government took credit for the high growth but did little to consolidate it. The failure to take advantage of the years of high growth to strengthen the budget position of the government and invest in infrastructure to boost future growth prospects stood exposed

It accused the UPA government of political interference in the commercial lending decisions of public sector banks.

It said controversies such as the 2G spectrum scam, the coal gate scam and the Common Wealth Games (CWG) reflected poorly on India’s image as an investment destination.