Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government has initiated the process of recommending the Central government to make an amendment at the earliest to enhance the strength of the AP Legislative Council from the existing 50 to 58.
A file has been processed by the AP chief secretary in this regard and sent to the Chief Minister for his signature before it goes to the Union home ministry.
As per the Constitution, the Council strength should be one third of the total strength of the Assembly and should not be less than 40. After bifurcation, the residuary AP Assembly has 175 members and accordingly the Council strength can stretch up to 58.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu feels that for the ruling Telugu Desam to have an upper hand in the Legislative Council, it is the right time to enhance the strength so that it can gain more seats. However, only Parliament has the right to pass such an amendment.
Sources say that if the need arises, AP Assembly will have to pass a statutory resolution to this effect by special majority.
AP Assembly affairs minister, Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, on Wednesday said that that the state would seek an amendment to the Act to increase the strength. He also said since there were discrepancies reported in the AP Re-organisation Act, especially regarding the strength of MLCs elected from local bodies and the limit of total members exceeding from 50 to 52, the government would write to the concerned authorities for rectification.
In a related development, the issue of conducting polls for the vacant MLC seats from the local body constituencies came up for discussion with the Chief Minister on Wednesday.
The AP government has been asked to name 17 MLC seats from local body constituencies out of 20, which were erroneously mentioned in the schedule of the AP Reorganisation Act itself. The AP government will need to send its recommendations to the Election Commission, which in turn will take a decision on conducting polls.
“A file has already been sent to the Chief Minister for his views, then it will go to the EC,” confirmed a senior official.
