Hinting the trouble, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) members went to the extent of lodging a privilege motion against government chief secretary PK Mohanty for failing to send the copies of the Bill to the session as they were kept in his office in the state Secretariat located just a kilometre away. However, the government staff brought the copies of the Bill one hour after the Assembly was adjourned.
On the other hand, a complete chaos ruled the House on the second day of the session as members of the two regions kept raising slogans for and against the bifurcation while both the leaders of the Gouse – chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and the leader of the main opposition N Chandrababu Naidu – stayed away from the proceedings.
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Sources told Business Standard that the state government was trying to push the debate on the draft Bill to a later date as the chief minister had been insisting on ‘sufficient time’ to study each of the clauses of the Bill.
However, AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, who is camping in Hyderabad, told the media later in the evening that the Bill will be tabled in the House on Monday and the business advisory committee (BAC) headed by the Assembly Speaker will also meet afterwards to decide the time for discussing the Bill. He also said that the people living in Hyderabad had no reason to be afraid of the bifurcation.
As the President of India had given six weeks time to the state Assembly for sending its opinion on the draft Bill, the chief minister's camp has been making moves towards holding one more Assembly session at a later date for complying with the President’s mandate.
The anti-bifurcation as well as the pro-bifurcation groups had interpreted these moves as part of an effort to stall the Telangana Bill from going to the Parliament during the ongoing winter session.
The government on Friday sent the 120-odd-page Bill to the Director of Translations but with no deadline, insisting that the English copy of the draft Bill will have to be translated into Telugu and Urdu languages for the convenience of the members, according to the government sources. Sources also believe that the House may be adjourned sine a die on Monday after tabling the draft Bill.
Meanwhile, two groups of government employees from the Telangana and Seemandhra regions confronted each other by raising slogans in the state Secretariat as the Assembly session was in progress.