At the instance of Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, a formal letter has been sent by the State Government to President Pranab Mukherjee seeking one month’s additional time for the Assembly to thoroughly discuss the AP Reorganisation Bill 2013.
The President had fixed January 23 as the deadline for returning the Bill but only a dozen members have spoken on the draft legislation with just four days left.
It is understood that the letter pointed out that even the floor leaders of all major parties had not spoken whereas a majority of the 279 members wanted an opportunity to express their views.
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Also, 9,024 amendments had been submitted by the members to Speaker Nadendla Manohar.
Sources said Mr. Reddy had written a letter directly to the President and another through the formal channel of the Chief Secretary on Friday night. Parallelly, Seemandhra Congress MLAs, Gade Venkat Reddy, Kothapalli Subbarayudu and E. V. Subbarayudu initiated the process of seeking additional time by submitting a letter to the Speaker requested for more information on the note submitted by various Central Government departments to the Union Cabinet.
These include the opinion given by the Attorney General on Article 371 (D) and on Hyderabad as the common capital, the move to provide special powers to Governor, whether the A. K. Antony Committee’s report was taken into consideration and why was the bifurcation issue taken up as table item in the Cabinet meeting.
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The Speaker forwarded the letter to the Chief Secretary P. K. Mohanty.
The Telangana Congress leaders plan to counter this move by writing to the President to reject the Government’s request and not to allow extra time.