Telugu Desam party president N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday accused AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh with dictating what the State Assembly should do by asking the Speaker to convene the Business Advisory Committee meeting to fix a date for taking up draft Telangana Bill.
Alleging that Mr. Singh was prompting the Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar to ensure that the Bill comes up before the House early, he told press persons that the latter was being made to perform a task which was clearly not his mandate. It amounted to influencing the Speaker through “remote control”.
He wondered how Mr. Singh was in a position to comment authoritatively on issues of concern when he had admitted that he had not read the Bill. He also accused the Congress with deceiving the people of Telangana by rushing the Bill in a special flight and then resorting to delaying tactics. To a question, he said he would not rule out the possibility of some briefcases coming in the flight as Congress was known to resort to such actions.
Mr. Naidu said he anticipated the Bill, when passed, would run into litigation as none of the legal hurdles pointed by experts were addressed by the Centre. The advice given by the Attorney General, G. N. Vahanvati and the former Director General of Lok Sabha Secretariat, Vishvanathan, to amend the Article 371 D was totally ignored. There were several such Constitutional violations. The convention that the bifurcation process should begin with adoption of resolution in the Assembly was given a go by.
He would highlight the loopholes in the Bill and the issues that were causing concern to the people with national political party leaders.
TDP chief for Bhopal Meanwhile, Mr. Naidu is leaving for Bhopal today to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Shivraj Singh Chouhan as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.
