Congress Slams Early Proroguing of Assembly Session

Former minister & ex-Leader of Opposition in the Telangana Legislative Council Mohammad Ali Shabbir strongly condemned the early proroguing of the monsoon session of the Telangana Assembly.

Shabbir Ali said that the session which began on September 7 and was originally planned till September 28 was adjourned sine die today due to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao forcing Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy to do it.

As a result, instead of the proposed 18 days, the monsoon session had only eight working days.

"CM KCR is ridiculing democratic institutions like the Legislative Assembly by reducing their functioning to a formality. It seems that the state government had convened the session only to pass 12 bills and facilitate KCR to make a bunch of new promises and unveil a bundle of lies," he said.

Shabbir Ali pointed out that only nine sessions of the Assembly were held in the first term of KCR during 2014-2018, and that the House functioned for a total of just 126 days.

He added that the longest session of the Assembly then was of just 19 days, from 5th November to 29th November, 2014.

"On an average, the Assembly functioned for only 25 days in a year in the first TRS regime," he said, and added that KCR was continuing the same trend in his second tenure, with only six sessions of the Assembly being held in the last two years so far and the cumulative number of working days just 35.

And even of these six sessions, the longest session was of just 10 days (9th-22nd September 2019), he pointed out.

He said that the previous Congress and TDP regimes in undivided Andhra Pradesh used to have Assembly sessions with 50 working days in general. However this had been reduced by more than half by the present TRS regime.

Shabbir Ali also claimed that KCR made tall promises before every session that the state government was ready to hold a debate in the House on any public issue and could extend the session by any number of days. However, once the session began, he would get all the bills passed with or without debate, and then wind up the session.

The former minister said that no discussions were held on several important issues including the problems being faced by the farmers, the rising unemployment, the deteriorating economic condition due to Covid-19, the health crisis, and the dispute with Andhra Pradesh over the sharing of the Krishna and Godavari river waters. He also said that the Chief Minister has crushed the voices of the opposition parties by confining their time limits to a few minutes while he himself used the Assembly and Council as a dais to make political speeches.

He claimed that the people of Telangana were observing the undemocratic behaviour of KCR, and would give him an appropriate response in the future.