The Assembly was bogged down with a confrontation between the ruling TRS and Telugu Desam at least on three issues on Wednesday, leading to frequent adjournments and finally calling it a day without the scheduled reply to the debate on the budget by Finance Minister Eatala Rajender.
On day five of the budget session, the proceedings were limited to a lone question on supply of adulterated milk in Hyderabad which took a curious turn, leading to a ruckus on Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s family enterprise, ‘Heritage’. After the controversy subsided, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi’s one-and-a-half hour long speech on the budget was heard with rapt attention.
The House plunged into another bout of showdown between TRS and TDP when a member of the former, Gongidi Sunitha, demanded an unconditional apology from TDP deputy leader A. Revanth Reddy for his remark on Tuesday that TRS MP K. Kavitha had enrolled herself in the intensive household survey at two places – Hyderabad and Nizamabad. Ms. Sunitha and other TRS members said it was a wild and baseless allegation but Mr. Reddy maintained that his observation was based on a newspaper report.
At the same time, the TDP pushed for a privilege motion against Information Technology Minister and Ms. Kavitha’s brother, K.T. Rama Rao, over his comment earlier that the party legislators were behaving like the directors of Heritage and nominees of Andhra Pradesh government.
Speaker S. Madhusudhana Chary adjourned the House four times, twice over the ‘Heritage’ issue and an equal number of times on the row over the remark against Ms. Kavitha. He heard the views of all parties as the TRS and TDP were unyielding on their demands but adjourned the House for the day as the stalemate could not be broken.
