Opposition Being Gagged In AP Assembly: YSRCP

Criticising the way the AP Assembly proceedings were being conducted, the YSR Congress Party has said the main Opposition Party was being denied its right to raise the voice of the people.

"The Assembly proceedings are being conducted in a one-sided manner with the Chair siding with the treasury benches and denying the mike to the main Opposition Party," YSRCP MLAs K Rajanna Dora and K Sanjeevaiah told reporters on Sunday.

The Speaker had been behaving like a TDP legislator and not in accordance with the august position he held, they alleged.

If the TDP ministers and MLAs targeted the Leader of the Opposition and went overboard, he stayed mum and took no action, but at the slightest impatience from the treasury benches, asked the Opposition leader and its members to withdraw their remarks, which was not in the true spirit of parliamentary democracy, they complained.

"When the law & order issue comes up for debate, the TDP contingent resorts to baseless allegations and speaks out of the context, which the Speaker allows, but he denies the mike to the Leader of the Opposition, which is against the established practice of the Assembly proceedings," they alleged.

"As the main Opposition, we have the right to raise issues of public interest, and it is by clear design that our voice is scuttled, as we have been consistently raising the loan waiver issue for which the TDP government has no answer," they said.

"We urge the Speaker to be impartial and conduct the House proceedings as per the norms, and give us due importance as we are taking up issues of public importance while the treasury benches are wasting the time of the House by irrelevant and baseless remarks," they demanded. (INN)