'Trap deal': Oppn MPs protest in Parliament complex against India-US trade agreement

Opposition MPs on Thursday staged a protest in Parliament House complex over the India-US interim trade deal, accusing the government of ''surrendering'' Indian interests. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, AICC general secretaries K C Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh, DMK's TR Baalu, SP's Dharmendra Yadav and Jaya Bachchan, CPI-ML's Sudama Prasad, among others, participated in the protest near the Makar Dwar of Parliament. With a huge banner that read ''trap deal'' and carrying 'Narender Surrender' posters, the MPs raised slogans such as ''US deal hai atyachari'' and ''desh ko bechna bandh karo''. Later, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, along with other Congress MPs, including those who have been recently suspended, stood on the steps of Makar Dwar and protested against the government over the deal. Earlier in the day, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi alleged that the government ignored the voices of workers and farmers while making decisions concerning their future and asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will listen to them now or if there is a ''grip'' on him too strong. Gandhi's attack on the government came a day after he alleged that the India-US interim trade deal was a ''wholesale surrender'', with India's energy security handed over to America and farmers' interests compromised. In a no-holds-barred attack on the Modi government, Gandhi, while participating in the debate on the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, claimed that Indian interests had been ''surrendered'' under the trade deal to protect the BJP's financial architecture. Slamming the Indo-US deal, Gandhi drew an analogy of how in martial arts after securing a grip, the next step is a chokehold, and then the opponent taps to give up. Gandhi underlined the need to protect the country's people, data, food supply and energy system. He said that had an INDIA bloc government negotiated the trade agreement with the US, it would have told President Donald Trump that he must treat India equally.