Assembly Speaker, Council Chairman to be elected today
The stage is set for a political showdown in Andhra Pradesh with the Opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) fielding its candidates on Friday for the posts of Speaker and deputy Speaker of the state Legislative Assembly.
TDP president and leader of the Opposition, N Chandrababu Naidu, also asserted that his party, which gave a notice for no-confidence motion against the Congress government on Thursday, was determined to go ahead with the no-trust move.
Governor ESL Narasimhan has convened a special session of the Assembly and Legislative Council on June 4 to elect the Speaker and deputy Speaker of the Assembly and the Chairman and deputy Chairman of the Council.
The post of the Assembly Speaker fell vacant with the incumbent, N Kiran Kumar Reddy, becoming the chief minister. The ruling Congress has fielded deputy Speaker, Nadendla Manohar, for the speaker's post and its chief whip, Bhatti Vikramarka, for the post of deputy Speaker.
Disregarding the request from the ruling party to ensure unanimous election of the two candidates, TDP has fielded its legislators KE Krishnamurthy and Suddala Devaiah for the posts of the Speaker and deputy Speaker respectively.
TDP has 90 legislators in the 294-member Assembly while the Congress has a strength of 155. The Praja Rajyam Party, which is on the verge of merging with the Congress, has 18 members. The Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen, another supporter of the ruling party, has seven legislators. With three independents also in its fold, the ruling alliance has 183 MLAs.
In contrast, the Opposition combine has a strength of 109 legislators including 11 members of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), four of Communist Party of India (CPI), two of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and one each of Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), Lok Satta Party and the recently-floated YSR Congress Party. One TDP legislator, P Srinivas Reddy, resigned from the Assembly in protest against the party’s stand on Telangana.
The sudden decision of the TDP to issue a notice for a no-confidence motion and field its candidate for the posts of Speaker and deputy Speaker seemed to have caught the fledgling YSR Congress unawares.
YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, the chief of the new political outfit and son of former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, had been taunting the TDP that it was not moving a no-confidence motion against the state government because “it is hand in glove with the ruling party.”
Jagan, as he is popularly called, earlier claimed that many ruling party legislators were with him. The time has come, according to political analysts, for Jagan to demonstrate how many Congress legislators are in his camp.
Meanwhile, the Congress and the TDP have issued whips to their members to vote for the respective party candidates.
For the Legislative Council both Chairman and deputy Chairman are slated to be elected unanimously. Only on nomination each for the two posts have been filed. While Chakrapani filed his nomination for the post of Chairman, N Vidyasagar filed his nomination for deputy Chairman. Both belong to the Congress party.
