Telangana Finance Minister T Harish Rao and Legislature Affairs Minister V Prashanth Reddy today confirmed that the upcoming budget session of the Assembly beginning from March 7 would be conducted without the traditional Governor's speech to a joint session of the legislature.
Talking to media persons at the TRSLP office today, the ministers slammed the opposition parties for "provocative" comments on the budget session.
They slammed the BJP leaders for alleging that the government was insulting the Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan by not inviting her to address the budget session.
Resorting mainly to whataboutery to defend the decision, the ministers said that the BJP government at the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were also insulting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamatha Banerjee through the Governor of that state.
Other BJP leaders including Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma were also insulting women and other top level persons, they claimed.
"We have no intention to insult the Governor. There is a technical issue that is resulting in our needing to conduct the session without her speech this time," they added. "Since the previous Assembly sessions held in 2021 were not prorogued, there is no need for the Governor's speech for this budget session. There is a tradition that the first session of the year will be started with the Governor's speech. Since this is technically just a continuation of the session of last year, there is no need of for the Governor's speech, and it is not a violation of the Constitution."
They also said that in 2004 a Parliament session was conducted without a speech by the President.
"There is no rule in the Constitution that every session should start with the Governor's speech," they said.
The ministers also claimed that the government gave the utmost respect to the Governor, and accused the BJP leaders of resorting to a malicious campaign against the ruling party.
"It is ridiculous that the BJP is talking about the Constitution when it has violated it so many times," they said.