Former Minister & ex-Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir has strongly condemned the early end of monsoon session of Legislative Assembly.
Shabbir Ali said that the monsoon session, which began on September 7, was originally planned to be held till September 28. However, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao forced Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy to adjourn the session ‘sine die’ on Wednesday. Instead of proposed 17 days, the monsoon session had only eight working days. “CM KCR is ridiculing the democratic institutions like the Legislative Assembly by reducing its functioning to a formality. It seems that the State Government had convened the session only to pass 12 Bills and facilitate CM KCR make a bunch of new promises and unveil a bundle of lies,” he said in a media statement on Wednesday.
Shabbir pointed out that only nine sessions of Assembly were held in the first term of CM KCR from 2014-2018 and the House functioned for a total of 126 days. He said the longest session of Telangana Legislative Assembly was of only 19 days which was held from 5th November-29th November, 2014. “On an average, the Assembly functioned for only 25 days in a year in the first tenure of TRS regime,” he said adding that CM KCR continued the same trend in his second tenure and so far only six sessions of Assembly were held in the last two years and the cumulative number of working days was just 35. Of six sessions, the longest session was of just 10 days (9th-22nd September, 2019) in the current tenure.
He said that the previous Congress and TDP regimes in undivided Andhra Pradesh used to have Assembly sessions with an average of over 50 working days. However, this has been reduced by more than half by the present TRS regime.
The former LoP in Council said that CM KCR makes tall promises before every session that the State Government was ready to hold debate in the House on any public issues and it could extend the session by any number of days. However, once the session begins, he gets all the Bills passed with or without debate and then winds up the session.
Shabbir Ali said no discussions were held on several important issues including the problems being faced by farmers, rising unemployment, deteriorating economic condition due to the Covid-19, health crisis, the dispute with Andhra Pradesh over sharing of Krishna and Godavari Rivers water. He said that the Chief Minister has crushed the voice of opposition parties by confining their time limit to a few minutes while he himself used the Assembly and Council as a dais to make political speeches.
He said that the people of Telangana were watching and observing the undemocratic behaviour of CM KCR and they would give an appropriate response in future.