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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, the target of the Opposition’s ire over the help she extended to former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi, tweeted a counter charge against the Congress barely a few hours before the House was to meet on Wednesday.

“A senior Congress leader was pressing me hard to give diplomatic passport to the Coal Scam accused Santosh Bagrodia,” she wrote on the micro-blogging site. She added that the name would be revealed inside the House. The immediate fallout of the tweet was that the Congress decided to put off its plans to hold a silent sit-in in the Parliament complex to press its demand for action in the Lalit Modi and Vyapam scams. The party later played it down. “No sit-in protest was planned,” a Congress leader said. The BJP meanwhile released booklets listing alleged corruption scandals in Congress-ruled States.

By the time the House convened at 11 a.m., Congress MPs were sporting black bands on theirs arms. Some of them were carrying placards inside the Lok Sabha that read “Modi break your silence, sack Sushma.” The House was adjourned with attempts to run it amid din not lasting beyond a few minutes each time.

Outside, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the Opposition was not interested in the discussion it had asked for. “We agreed to a discussion immediately. They have changed their stance and now want an investigation,” he said. “An investigation is done when a provision of law is violated. When we asked the Opposition which provision of law has been violated, they were silent,” he said.

Mr. Jaitley sought to link the Goods and Services Tax to the growth story and dub the Congress the only impediment. GST, he said, would enhance the country’s GDP by 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent. “If the Congress opposes GST, the country will oppose it,” he said.

Countering Mr. Jaitley’s charge, Congress leader Anand Sharma said that the notice he had served in the Rajya Sabha was not for discussion but for the Prime Minister to fix responsibility. On GST, Mr. Sharma said the BJP and Narendra Modi had originally opposed the idea for years and should be held responsible for keeping the single tax regime out.

BJP, Congress douse fire within

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress crossed swords on the floor of Parliament on Wednesday, but behind closed doors the parliamentary wings of the parties had to face their own problems — and of leaders publicly airing views contrary to the respective party lines.

At the BJP parliamentary party meeting, party president Amit Shah told his colleagues that they need not take their cue from the media that had targeted its top leaders, currently embroiled in cases relating to acts of impropriety and corruption. The party had not come to power, courtesy the media, he said.

The reference was to veteran BJP leader Shanta Kumar’s letter, saying that scandals had dented the government’s image. It was a letter that did not just leave the BJP red-faced, but also reportedly struck a chord with some troubled members.

Almost simultaneously, the Congress parliamentary party meeting saw Shashi Tharoor, MP, being ticked off by an irate party president, Sonia Gandhi, after comments he had made at an earlier meeting went public. Mr. Tharoor had reportedly said on Monday that he was not in favour of the Congress disrupting Parliament to press the Modi government to seek the resignations of three top BJP leaders.

“You always do this, it’s become a habit with you,” Ms. Gandhi told Mr. Tharoor, party sources said.

Stunned Congress leaders looked on, as party vice-president Rahul Gandhi added his bit — that if everything that was discussed was to come out in public, perhaps, party meetings should be discontinued.

If the BJP top brass is working hard to convince its own members that none of its top leaders has done anything wrong, the Congress leadership, devastated by last year’s election results, is still grappling with differences in its own ranks on how best to tackle the BJP.

At the BJP meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat quietly, party sources told The Hindu, leaving it to Mr. Shah, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to do the talking.

Mr. Shah has asked party members to consult spokespersons before saying anything in public.

The centrepiece of the meeting was External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj defending her own action in writing to the British government to give scam-tainted IPL commissioner Lalit Modi travel documents — if the law permitted — to enable him to travel to Portugal to be with his wife who was undergoing treatment for cancer.

After that, it was left to her again to speak out in defence of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan currently embroiled in the Vyapam scam, as she is an MP from the State.

Channel criticised

Curiously, she also referred to a TV channel, without naming it, that had led the attack on her and mentioned that in the past, its owner, though facing FEMA charges, had been allowed to go abroad for medical treatment, thus pointing out its similarity to the Lalit Modi case. This remark is being read in BJP circles as a veiled attack on a senior party colleague who is believed to be close to the TV channel. She ended by thanking Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for having defended her.

At the Congress parliamentary party meeting, party president Sonia Gandhi’s outburst against Shashi Tharoor, MP, on Wednesday comes a few days after she had taken another senior party MP to task for questioning the party line on taking an aggressive line in Parliament on the scams that the BJP is involved in.

At that meeting, party sources told The Hindu, she had said that the Congress was now an Opposition party, and it, therefore, needed to adopt a tough line.

Highlights: day 1 and 2 of monsoon session