First Session Of New Telangana Starts, MLAs Sworn In

The first session of the second Assembly of Telangana began on Thursday with the swearing in of the newly-elected members.

Pro tem Speaker Mumtaz Ahmed Khan administered the oath of office and secrecy to the members. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was the first to take the oath, and was followed by lady members and then male members in alphabetical order of their names.

The present Assembly stands out for its first session starting 36 days after the election of the members. This is perhaps the first time that the first session commenced after such a long time after the election results were announced.

As many as 76 MLAs of the first Assembly were re-elected to the present House, which consists of a total of 119 members. It also has 23 first-time MLAs.

Leader of the House K Chandrashekar Rao is the senior-most member in the Assembly in terms of the number of times he has been elected to the House - eight. Other senior MLAs include pro tem Speaker Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, Errabelli Dayakar Rao and Redya Naik, who have all been elected six times now. Ruling party members T Harish Rao, Etela Rajender and Koppula Eeshwar have also been elected to the House six times, and consecutively.

Congress MLA from Kothagudem Vanama Venkateswara Rao (73) is the oldest member of the House. The youngest member is also from the Congress - the party's woman MLA from Yellandu, Haripriya Naik, was elected to the House for the first time at the age of 29.

The party-wise strength of the members is:

TRS - 88 MLAs
Congress - 19
MIM - 7
TDP - 2
BJP - 1
RPI - 1
Independent - 1

Two sitting MPs of the ruling TRS Balka Suman and Ch Malla Reddy contested the Assembly elections from the Chennur and Medchal Assembly segments respectively and won. They later resigned from their MP posts. Similarly, two MLCs, one each from the TRS and the Congress, were also elected to the present Assembly - P Mahender Reddy and Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy. The two have been elected from the Munugodu and Kodangal Assembly constituencies respectively.

Five members could not attend the swearing-in ceremony: MIM leaders Akbaruddin Owaisi and Jaffar Hussain Meraj, TRS member Madhavaram Krishna Rao, TDP member Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and BJP member Raja Singh.

Earlier, the pro tem Speaker, KCR and other members paid floral tributes at the Martyrs Memorial opposite the Assembly building complex.