All parties to get a chance to raise issues

Issues to be taken up by ruling and Opposition parties on rotation basis

Reiterating its decision to allow discussion on all key issues raised by the Opposition parties, the State government has offered to allow the issues prioritised by the Opposition parties on rotation basis for taking up debates in the ongoing session.

The parties will get an opportunity to highlight the issues of their choice on the basis of their strength in the House. Accordingly, the ruling TRS will get the first priority followed by the main Opposition Congress, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the CPI (Marxist).

Priorities

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the floor leaders convened by Deputy Speaker Padma Devender Reddy in the Assembly on Friday. The Deputy Speaker asked the parties to submit their respective lists of issues that they preferred to raise in the House prioritising the subjects which they want to come up first. The meeting was attended by BJP’s G. Kishan Reddy and AIMIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi while Legislative Affairs Minister T. Harish Rao represented the Treasury Benches.

The Congress did not attend the meeting that was convened as a follow up to the Thursday’s Business Advisory Committee as the main Opposition members staged a walk out from the House in protest against the Government’s “indifferent attitude” in addressing the crisis in the farm sector. The Congress members left the Assembly premises to participate in the Chalo Assembly protest rally from Gandhi Bhavan.

Length of session

The Telugu Desam Party-Telangana State members too were not present in the meeting as they took the Deputy Speaker’s permission for their absence citing their meeting with the party president N. Chandrababu Naidu who was in the city.

The TDP members assured that they would abide by the decisions taken at the meeting.

The meeting, according to sources, could not finalise the schedule of the Assembly and the list of issues that would be taken up on daily basis as there was no clarity yet on the number of days the House would be in session.

The Government had announced that it was committed to allowing the proceedings for as many days the opposition wanted so that all the key issues came up for discussion.

The ruling party is understood to have decided to highlight the achievements of the Government whenever its turn came up in the rotation system and had finalised list of its priorities accordingly. “It is now for the opposition members to submit their priorities to the Speaker so that debates are allowed on them,” a senior TRS member said.