Speaker Elections: Congress Vs TDP

With less than an hour to go for the commencement of the elections for the position of the Speaker - an event that is occuring after 40 years in the history of Andhra Pradesh politics - confusion was triggered at the Assembly by a bulletin released at 10am on Saturday.

A circular issued by Raja Sadaran, Secretary to State Legislature, on Friday stated that the elections would take place in a secret ballot system. The circular explained that each member of the Assembly would be required to go a private compartment, tick against their favoured candidate and cast their votes in a ballot box that sits on the desk of the protem Speaker.

However, the bulletin released on Saturday morning an hour before the elections stated that the elections would be conducted in a open ballot manner - the members of the Assembly would be required to stand up or raise their hands in favour of their candidate.

The TDP has turned a deaf ear to the Congress' appeal to elect the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker unanimously as has been the tradition, and is fielding K E Krishnamurthy and Suddala Devaiah for 2 posts.

Nadenla Manohar and Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka are the Congress' candidates for the posts of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker, respectively.

Addressing the media at the Assembly media point, TDP MLAs Suman Rathod and Revanth Reddy condemned the latest bulletin released regarding the election procedure. The questioned the protem Speaker and the government if the sudden call for open ballot election was because the Congress had lost faith in the Assembly.