Assembly sat for seven days, actually worked only 2.5 days

Hyderabad: The second meeting of the Eighth session of the XV State Assembly has many firsts. It was the first session which was the first Budget meet in the entire history of the Assembly in the combined AP. After the formation of Telangana there was no address by the Governor.

According to statistics announced on the last day of the Budget session on Tuesday, the Assembly during the second meeting of the VIII session sat for seven days. But actually, it worked for 54 hours, 47 minutes. Thus, the actual working comes to two days, seven hours and forty-seven minutes.

The starred questions answered orally during the session were 22. The number of answers to starred questions tabled was 16. The supplementary questions raised by members were 88 and speeches 31. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao made a statement during the meeting. Four bills were introduced and passed.

Considering the time allocated to question hour and zero-hour, the actual performance in discussing and passing of Rs 2.56 lakh crore Budget for 2022-23 stands at around a little over 48 hours (two days). The second meeting of the session witnessed some MLAs taking names of non-members several times, besides making allegations. This made CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka object to the treasury benches dragging non-members during discussions.

Other than during inter-State issues, State assemblies avoid allowing discussions or criticism by members on issues and public policies of neighboring States. However, name of Karnataka was mentioned, also statements on a sub-judice issue of that government policy pending before the Karnataka High Court.