CM picks holes in Telangana Bill

Hyderabad: Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Saturday described the draft Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill 2013 as unconstitutional and said that it had violated the constitutional and parliamentary practices.

During his 95-minute speech on the debate on the Bill in the Assembly, Kiran sought to know the reasons for not giving the objectives and reasons as well as the financial memorandum, which were considered to be the most important and mandatory while presenting the Bill to divide a State. He claimed that the Bill was not vetted properly by the Law Department and demanded that the Centre clarify whether the T Bill was a draft Bill or a Bill. He observed that the Union Home Secretary, in one of his letters, said the President had forwarded Telangana Bill. And in the second letter it was mentioned as draft Bill. Sending a draft Bill to the President was against the rules of Lok Sabha, he said.

The Chief Minister pointed out that the Centre had also refused to give the observations made by the Attorney-General on the bifurcation of State and the complications that would arise out of Article 371 (D) in the Bill. Even the boundary between the two States and economic package for the residuary AP state did not find place in it, Kiran said. The Centre had no right to propose a common capital as it was against the Constitution, he said.

Calling it as a unilateral decision, he said the Centre did not work in the direction of bringing a consensus among the people of the two regions before taking the final decision to divide the State. Reiterating that he was not against Telangana but against the process adopted by the Centre, Kiran said he had urged the Centre to announce Rs one lakh crore special package for Telangana instead of carving it out. He was opposed to Telangana because the T region people would be badly affected.