Hyderabad: The ambiguity in the orders issued for accommodating Telangana and Seemandhra Legislature offices has led to an awkward situation with secretaries of both Telangana and AP allotting the same offices to different leaders.
Though AP Assembly Speaker Kodela Siva Prasada Rao had held a preliminary meeting with his Telangana counterpart S. Madhusudana Chary recently to sort out issues of sharing of offices for both the legislatures, a gap has remained with the latest proceedings issued by the concerned secretaries.
On July 14, AP legislature secretary K. Satyanarayana Rao — duly quoting the AP Speaker’s orders — allotted some rooms and chambers to various leaders of political parties including one chamber in the old Assembly building to Deputy Speaker Mandali Budda Prasad.
Meanwhile on the instructions of the Telangana Speaker, Telangana legislature secretary S. Raja Sadaram on July 17 allotted the same chambers to Telangana Assembly Deputy Speaker Padma Devender Reddy.
While the AP secretary allotted a chamber in the CLP office to AP Assembly Chief Whip Kalva Srinivasulu, the Telangana secretary allotted the same chambers to the TRS legislature party office along with some more rooms. Similarly, the T secretary has allotted all the available rooms in and around Jubilee Hall to the Telangana Council and political party offices and there is now no room for Seemandhra Congress Council members.
These orders created a flutter in the Assembly buildings on Friday as staff of the respective political leaders started making enquiries about when to move in.
The situation is such that unless both the Speakers meet again and sort out the issues or the Governor, being the head of both the legislatures, summons the Speakers and gets the orders modified, it may lead to ugly scenes if some of the political leaders try to occupy the same chambers.
Acting on the instructions given by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan, the then Chief Secretary P.K. Mohanty, on May 30 (two days before the Appointed Day of formation of Telangana) had issued a G.O. stating that the Old Assembly and the adjacent rooms and committee halls were allotted to AP and the new Assembly building and its adjacent rooms and committee halls were allotted to the Telangana Legislature.
Similarly, Jubilee Hall and its adjacent rooms were given to Telangana and the existing Legislative Council Building to AP.
Though the orders appear to be clear, they compounded the problems as they did not consider the ground situation. The old Assembly building has no additional rooms like the new one due to lack of space.
In the just-concluded session of AP Assembly, most of the ministers and members had used the rooms in the new Assembly without the consent of the Telangana Assembly Speaker.
“We will insist that the AP legislature stick to the orders of May 30 from tomorrow onwards,” said an official.
Section 8 of the AP Reorganisation Act clearly states that the decision of the governor is final on deciding accommodation to various offices in the common capital area. It, however, has a rider that “it should be done in consultation with the Council of Ministers of Telangana state”.
However, building allotment orders were issued during President’s Rule and the T government argues that since the Act came into existence from June 2 they needed to be consulted before issuing any orders, which did not happen.
