Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress members staged a walkout from the Assembly on Friday protesting the delay in constituting the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes commissions in the State, even three-and-a-half years after the formation of Telangana.
S. Venkata Veeraiah (TDP) and S.A. Sampath Kumar (Congress) pointed out that lack of SC, ST commissions was impacting the employment opportunities of the two communities due to inordinate delay in filling over 36,000 backlog posts. Had there been commissions they would have maintained pressure on the government for speedy action on filling the backlog posts, they felt.
Besides, non-existence of the commissions was denying an opportunity to SC, ST communities a platform for redressing their grievances and problems, they said adding that the statutory panels would also improve accountability among the officers concerned in the matter of spending allocated funds and taking action against attacks. G. Kishan Reddy (BJP) and S. Rajaiah (CPI-M) also wanted the government to constitute the commissions at the earliest.
Minister for SC Development G. Jagadish Reddy told the House that the State government had sent the proposal for bifurcation of the two commissions to the Centre as required under the provisions of Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act but there was no response from the Centre. TDP and BJP staged walkout stating that they did not got proper answer, while K. Jana Reddy led the Congress members out the House stating that they were protesting the government attitude in constituting the two commissions.
Mr. Jagadish Reddy hit back at the Congress and BJP stating that they were protesting only for the publicity since the two Commissions were not in place since 2010, when Congress was in power in combined AP, and that the BJP-led government at the Centre was sitting on the State's request on bifurcation of the two institutions.
It turned out to be a symbolic walk-out as The members returned in the House after five minutes gap.
Thandas as GPs
On upgrading ‘thandas and gudems’ with more than 500 population as gram panchayats (GPs), Minister for Panchayat Raj Jupally Krishna Rao said the government was examining the proposals sent by district collectors but the guidelines were yet to be finalised. He stated that 1,757 thandas and gudems were so far identified for upgradation.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) members P. Venkateswarlu, R. Bapu Rao and E. Dayakar Rao, R. Ravindra Kumar (CPI) and G. Kishan Reddy (BJP) requested the government to relax the norms of population and distance from existing GP headquarters while upgrading thandas and gudems as GPs.
