New Delhi, March 11: A regular meeting of the Union Cabinet could not be held on Thursday as the Lok Sabha was due to sit late and also because Congress president Sonia Gandhi had invited party MPs and their spouses home for dinner at 10 Janpath.

Meetings of the Cabinet committees on economic affairs and on infrastructure were also postponed. The Lok Sabha was due to hold a late sitting to complete the discussion on the General Budget 2010-11, particularly as the House had lost three days in the pandemonium over the Women’s Reservation Bill.
Mrs Gandhi, meanwhile, hosted the dinner to give her MPs a pep talk and allay their fears that the proposed legislation would harm them. “Exactly with this in mind, Madam invited all of us with our wives and told us the move was not against men,” said an MP who attended the dinner. “She asked my wife: does she not want to be equal to me?”
The dinner, coming two days after the Rajya Sabha passed the Women’s Reservation Bill, was attended by all party MPs, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and senior ministers like Pranab Mukherjee, P. Chidambaram, S.M. Krishna and M. Veerappa Moily. Mr Rahul Gandhi and several AICC office-bearers also attended.
Mrs Gandhi’s dinner was seen in political circles as an attempt to galvanise her MPs for the second phase of the battle on the bill in the Lok Sabha. “Apart from the pep talk, the party leadership also wanted us to take the message of the bill all over the country since the legislation would have to be passed by half of the state Assemblies after it is passed in the Lok Sabha,” a dinner invitee said.

Age Correspondent