TOKYO- The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the main opposition Democratic Party agreed Wednesday to hold off-session House of Councillors deliberations on Monday, mainly to discuss alleged favoritism by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a controversial school plan.

The deliberations will take place in the absence of Abe, who will be on a visit to Europe.

Masaji Matsuyama, the LDP's Diet affairs chief in the upper chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, and his DP counterpart, Kazuya Shinba, decided to hold the deliberations at a joint meeting of the Upper House Committee on Cabinet and the Upper House Committee on Education, Culture and Science.

The House of Representatives, the lower chamber, has already decided to hold similar off-session deliberations on Monday.

Matsuyama and Shinba confirmed that former vice education minister Kihei Maekawa will be summoned to give unsworn testimony in the Upper House deliberations, with the same amount of time allocated for him as in the Lower House.

Maekawa has claimed that there was pressure from the prime minister's office behind a plan to allow Kake Educational Institution, headed by a personal friend of Abe, to open a university department of veterinary medicine in a national strategic zone in western Japan.

At Wednesday's meeting, Shinba made a request to hold a Budget Committee meeting attended by Abe. Matsuyama rejected the request, saying that such a plan is not "under consideration at the moment."

"It's important to make the best use of the opportunity on Monday," Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of Komeito, the ruling coalition partner of the LDP, told a news conference on Wednesday.

A decision on whether to hold a meeting of the Budget Committee should be based on the outcome of the deliberations on Monday, Yamaguchi also said. (Jiji Press)