NE NEWS SERVICE
AMARAVATI, JAN 28
The Andhra Pradesh assembly on Monday passed a statutory resolution to abolish the legislative council. With the opposition TDP boycotting the session, the resolution was passed 133-0.
The move comes after the council, which has TDP in the majority, refused to pass the YSRC government’s bill to have three capitals in the state and referred it to the select committee. The upper house has 58 seats with TDP having 26 councillors and YSRC nine.
After a day-long debate in the assembly, speaker Tammineni Sitharam put the resolution for division and declared that it has been passed unopposed. The council will cease to exist only after both houses of Parliament approve the bill under Article 169 and the President gives his final nod. The YSRC government is hopeful of getting the Parliament nod in the upcoming budget session while TDP says it would take at least two years.
If President Ram Nath Kovind gives his assent, this will be the second time in 35 years that the council will be abolished. N T Rama Rao’s government had first abolished the upper house in 1985. It was current chief minister Y S Jaganmohan Reddy’s father, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy who had revived it in 2007.
Earlier in the day, the Andhra Pradesh cabinet, chaired by Jagan, passed a resolution to abolish the upper house. Jagan later said that the government was proud to abolish the council as it was subverting people’s welfare and that the government decided on the move despite knowing that YSRC would gain a majority in the house within a year. Quoting Martin Luther King Jr’s comment ‘the time is always right to do the right thing’, he added that they did not want to delay the right thing.
