Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday said the BJP-led NDA government spoke of “cooperative federalism” for the Centre and states to work collectively but it had remained a mere slogan. He said the Centre still controlled several issues that concern the states.
Speaking in the Assembly, Mr Rao said, “The boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies were drawn when India’s population was 30 crore and they continue to remain the same even when the population has increased to 130 crore, making public representatives inaccessible to the people. The Centre should reorganise Parliament and Assem-bly constituencies without any delay as per present population and needs for achieving better results.”
Mr Rao’s comments came in the backdrop of the Centre not adhering to the provision in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 on delimitation of Assembly constituencies. Both in Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh, bigger Assemblies would enable the ruling parties to accommodate defectors.
“For decades, we have the same constituencies, while the population has increa-sed manifold. The Centre is bounded to create new constituencies in Telugu states as per the Reorganisation Act. But this too is not being done for the past 36 months,” Mr Rao said.
Democracy not maturing: KCR
Mr Rao expressed displeasure over democracy not attaining higher maturity levels even after 70 years of Independence.
“We should have evolved better and attained higher maturity levels in these seven decades. But it did not happen. The Centre continues to control states on issues with which it has no connection. Even the gram panchayats and NREGA wages for labourers are controlled and paid from Delhi,” Mr Rao said.
Mr Rao was upset that the Centre had not notified the new districts created by the state government last year.
“Creation of new districts is the sole power of state governments. The Union home ministry is yet to notify new districts though they were created more than a year ago. Though RBI and NIC have notified our new districts, which is sufficient to run new districts, we are trying for the home ministry’s approval,” he said.
