Nadendla Manohar Is Speaker

Congress leader Nadendla Manohar was declared the Speaker of the Assembly, twice in half an hour.

At 11am on sunday the members of the Parliament and the protem Speaker J C Diwakar Reddy occupied their respective positions, and after the national anthem was played, the Assembly commenced.

The woefully inexperienced protem speaker, who needed to be guided through the entire procedure, kickstarted the session by reading out the agenda for the day - the election of the Speaker of the Assembly. He explained that the Assembly could decide if the secret/open ballot method should be employed.

D Sridhar Babu moved a motion to make Nadendla Manohar the Speaker. All those in favour of the motion were requested to stand up, following which a sizeable part of the Assembly was on its feet. Those against the motion were requested to rise, and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was on its feet.

"Since more than 50% of the Assembly is in favour of the motion, Nadendla Manohar is hereby declared the Speaker of the Assembly," announced J C Diwakar Reddy.

The TDP, expectedly, was in an uproar. TDP President N Chandrababu Naidu sought to know where democracy was in the flash procedure that was being conducted. He lamented that their candidate, K E Krishnamurthy, was not even given a chance.

10 minutes of noise later, the protem Speaker proposed an open election, and the Congress and the TDP accepted it.

In what is a crushing defeat for the TDP, Nadenda Manohar registered 156 votes, while KE had 90 votes to his credit.

And Nadendla Manohar was declared the Speaker of the Assembly a second time.