Hyderabad: With the Telangana State Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudana Chary accepting the merger of 12 Telugu Desam MLAs into the TRS Legislature Party on Thursday, the TDLP now has only three legislators — A. Revanth Reddy, Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and R. Krishnaiah.
As per convention and Assembly rules, since it has fewer than five MLAs, it cannot have a separate legislature party office and will have to vacate the office that it occupies.
The Speaker’s decision is most likely to create a controversy in the backdrop of petitions filed against the former TD MLAs seeking their disqualification on grounds of defection.
The petitions filed by E. Dayakar Rao, then a TD MLA, are pending with the Speaker who had issued notices to the MLAs and sought replies. Mr Dayakar Rao had unsuccessfully approached the High Court and the Supreme Court over the issue. Whether or not a Legislature Party can adopt a merger resolution on its own without the original party taking such a decision is a grey area.
In 2011, the Praja Rajyam, headed by actor-politician K. Chiranjeevi had decided to merge with the Congress both at the party and at the legislature party levels.
Last year, Telangana Legislative Council Chairman K. Swamy Goud had also merged five TD MLCs into the TRS based on a petition submitted by the MLCs pending their petitions seeking disqualification.
The TD legislators submitted a petition to the Speaker which stated: “We have the required strength for merger into the TRS Legislature Party under Para 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.” The petition was duly accepted by Mr Madhusudana Chary.
The legislators are:
Errabelli Dayakar Rao, Talasani Srinivas Yadav (at present a minister in the TS Cabinet), G. Sayanna, T. Prakash Goud, Teegala Krishna Reddy, Manchireddy Kishan Reddy, Madhavaram Krishna Rao, K.P. Vivekananda Goud, Challa Dharma Reddy, S. Rajender Reddy, Maganti Gopinath and Arikepudi Gandhi.
What the law says
Paragraph 4 of 10th Schedule of Constitution states:
Disqualification on ground of defection not to apply in case of merger.
(1) A member of a House shall not be disqualified under sub-paragraph (1) of paragraph 2 where his original political party merges with another political party and he claims that he and any other members of his original political party (a) have become members of such other political party or, as the case may be, of a new political party formed by such merger; or (b) have not accepted the merger and opted to function as a separate group, and from the time of such merger, such other political party or new political party or group, as the case may be, shall be deemed to be the political party to which he belongs for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) of paragraph 2 and to be his original political party for the purposes of this sub-paragraph.
(2) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph, the merger of the original political party of a member of a House shall be deemed to have taken place if, and only if, not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such merger.
