The Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly will resume its budget session from Monday in the backdrop of ‘Çhalo Assembly’ call given by the Telangana political Joint Action Committee to apply pressure on Telangana MLAs to make a forceful demand for tabling the separate Statehood Bill.
The House will resume its sitting after close to two and half months recess after the constitution of Departmentally Related Standing Committees (DRSC) to discuss budgetary allocations to various sectors. The session will end after passing the Appropriation Bill for the full financial year 2013-14. Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy had presented Rs. 1.61 lakh crore budget to the Assembly on March 18.
The session will be unique in the sense that the DRSC reports presented by 12 panels to Speaker Nadendla Manohar would be tabled in the House.
On the first day, the House will adjourn after passing a motion paying homage to sitting TDP MLA Ambati Brahmnaiah, who passed away recently. The Business Advisory Committee will meet to discuss the agenda for the remaining session though indications available suggest that the House would sit for eight or nine working days. The budget session, which began on March 13 did not transact any major business as the TRS continued its demand for passage of Bill in support of separate Statehood. The TRS legislators may again raise the issue of denial of permission for ‘Çhalo Assembly’ rally on June 14. The TJAC chairman M. Kodandaram averred that the rally would be conducted at any cost even as City Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma said there was no permission to it. Leader of the Opposition N. Chandrababu Naidu who skipped the first session due to his ‘Vastunna Meekosam’ padayatra is set to return to the House. On Sunday he reviewed the party’s strategy for the session and the party is likely to target “tainted Ministers” and present the one crore signatures collected against power crisis in the Assembly.
The YSR Congress said it was determined to corner the Government on public issues including power tariff hike, erratic power supply and national project status for Pranahita-Chevella and Polavaram schemes. The CPI (M) MLA Julakanti Ranga Reddy wanted the session to conduct proceedings for at least 20 days while CPI State secretary K. Narayana too said the proposed 10 working days would not be sufficient to take up the issues affecting people.
The ruling party, on its part, is gearing up to face the opposition onslaught after a series of political developments in the past few weeks including the resignation of Ministers P. Sabitha Indra Reddy and Dharmana Prasada Rao besides the dismissal of D.L. Ravindra Reddy. The disqualification of Congress MLAs came as a big relief to the Congress as it had given a stability of sorts to the Government.
