AP reorganisation bill: Cong launches counterattack, accuses TDP, YSRC of not joining debate

The ruling Congress party on Tuesday launched a counter attack against the YSR Congress and the Telugu Desam Party "for not joining them" for the debate on the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2013 on the floor of the House.

Political parties have already wasted three weeks of the state legislative Assembly ever since it was reconvened on January 3.

“We appeal to both the parties to stop disrupting the proceedings of the House and start taking part in the debate from tomorrow onwards. Only by conveying our views through the Assembly we will be able to impress upon the President of India and Parliament to perhaps change the course of events on the issue of bifurcation,” senior minister N Raghuveera Reddy along his colleagues, said today.

While members of all the political parties from Seemandhra were seen staging protests in the well of the House ever since the Bill was tabled, the ministers chose to target the two opposition parties apparently in a bid to deny them of political mileage they were seeking to gain by stalling the Assembly.

While TDP and Congress members have been talking in different voices on the regional lines, the YSR Congress party, which is just confined to the Seemandhra region, has been vociferously demanding a resolution to moved in favour of united Andhra Pradesh before initiating the debate on the bifurcation Bill.  This has made matters difficult for the floor managers of the ruling party to bring unanimity on the issue of debate.

“As the YSR Congress party is now confined to only 175 seats of the Seemandhra region, its president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy knows he would be able become chief minister only if the state gets bifurcated. That is why he is not keen on the debate. Similarly, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu is also not prepared to say anything on the floor of the House either in support or against the state bifurcation as it could cost him dearly,” Raghuveera Reddy said while warning them that the Congress would reveal more about their real intentions if they did not join the debate tomorrow.

According to political observers, the floor strategy adopted by the YSR Congress was intended to get its members suspended from the House to show the other two parties as siding with the bifurcation. Both Congress and TDP are not willing to give the YSR Congress a further political edge in Seemandhra by resorting to suspensions for the sake of debate.

Only  three working days are now left for the Assembly before it takes a long Sankranti holiday. The session will reconvene from January 17 while the six-week time given by President Pranab Mukherjee for sending views on the Bill ends on January 23.