♦ Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has constituted Parliamentary Friendship Groups with 64 countries and appointed senior Opposition leaders to head over a dozen of them. Each of these groups have 11 members, including those from the Rajya Sabha too.
♦ The initiative seeks to complement traditional diplomacy with sustained Parliament-to-Parliament dialogue, enabling lawmakers to directly interact with their counterparts abroad. The Friendship Groups will facilitate exchanges on legislative practices, trade, technology, social policy, culture and shared global challenges, while strengthening bilateral ties and promoting mutual understanding.
♦ Countries included in the first phase span multiple regions, including Sri Lanka, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, South Africa, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Maldives, the United States, Russia, the European Parliament, South Korea, Nepal, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, Oman, Australia, Greece, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
♦ Senior parliamentarians including BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Baijayant Panda, Nishikant Dubey, Anurag Singh Thakur, Bhartruhari Mahtab, D. Purandeswari, Hema Malini, Biplab Kumar Deb, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Jagdambika Pal, Sasmit Patra and Aparajita Sarangi and Congress MPs P. Chidambaram, Gaurav Gogoi, Manish Tiwari, KC Venugopal and Shashi Tharoor will lead the parliamentary groups.