No flip-flop by Congress on Insurance Bill

New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday rejected BJP's charge that the party is doing a 'U-turn' on the Insurance Bill, saying that there are "no double standards" by it on the issue.

"I think, there are no double standards on the Insurance Bill by the Congress," Gandhi told reporters in Parliament House.

The opposition party has kept the government guessing on the crucial Bill asking it to take on board all stakeholders and favouring the Select Committee route even as it insisted that the measure was its own "baby" and it was a "misnomer" that the party was opposed to it.

The controversial Insurance Bill, which was listed in Rajya Sabha yesterday, was deferred for consideration for the time being after a meeting of the government with opposition leaders failed to break the deadlock in the face of the demand to send it to a Select Committee.

The meeting, convened by Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu yesterday, could not iron out differences with the opposition despite Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's plea that the current bill has virtually the same language and content as the previous bill of the Congress-led UPA.

Rejecting suggestions that it was doing a "flip-flop" on the Insurance Bill issue, party spokesperson Randip Surjewala had said, "If investments of lakhs of people were going to be jeopardised, then the necessary balancing has to be done."