Congress and BJP decide to take up T Bill in a special session of Parliament in Feb 1st week!

Parliament is likely to have its special session in the first week of February to debate the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill-2013. According to sources, the Congress leadership has already taken the BJP on board in this regard.

The UPA government is planning to hold the special session in such a way that there would be enough time between the Jan 26 deadline set by the President for sending the T-Bill back to him by the State Legislature and the date of commencement of the special sitting of Parliament, to fine-tune the final draft of the Bill to be tabled in the House.

Sources say there is still uncertainty on the fate of the Bill. A top Congress leader, who is privy to the happenings in Delhi on the T-front, told Express that the passage of the Bill in both the Houses of Parliament depends on the political scenario at the national level at that time.

Though the Seemandhra Congress leaders want to plead with President Pranab Mukherjee to extend the deadline for returning the T-Bill to him, highly placed sources divulged that the chances of extending the deadline were very remote as the State Legislature has so far not efficiently utilised even the 40-day time period given.

The reason for this argument is that wherever extension of time was given earlier when the Reorganisation Bills of states concerned were discussed in the respective state Assemblies, the President had to extend the deadline as the those state Legislatures were not in session.

However, in case of Andhra Pradesh, the Assembly was very much in session when the T-Bill was remitted to it.

“Even after sending the Bill, the Assembly couldn’t debate it for three days. After that, long recess has been given for Christmas/New year. Therefore, any demand for extension of deadline would be highly unreasonable,” a Telangana Congress leader said.

Meanwhile, after going through the procedures followed in the Assemblies of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar when the Bills of Reorganisation of those states were debated there, Speaker N Manohar has come to the conclusion that the examples of those two states would not give any proper direction to the AP Assembly to debate the T-Bill in a smooth manner.

The debate in UP and Bihar was smooth because the respective Reorganisation Bills were discussed in those Assemblies only after consensus was arrived among members. But, in case of AP, the situation is entirely different. Hence, the Speaker is learnt to be of the opinion that he would have to perform a balancing act between both the sides of the conflict when the T-Bill is discussed in the State Assembly. As part of this exercise, the Speaker would inform the procedures followed in UP and Bihar to floor leaders of various parties by holding the meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) of Assembly either on Jan 2 or 3 prior to the resumption of its session. During the meeting, he would seek their advices on how to take forward the debate on the Bill.

“The Speaker would request the leaders to give suggestions on how to conduct the debate in the Assembly. Basing on their advices, he would move forward,” said a source.

Manohar came back to Hyderabad on Saturday concluding his study visit in UP and Bihar to know the procedure followed in those Assemblies when Uttarakhand and Jharkhand were created.

A team of officials of the Assembly secretariat, headed by State Legislature Secretary S Rajasadaram, who had accompanied the Speaker, collected the records relating to the debate in the UP and Bihar Assemblies on the division.

In UP and Bihar Assemblies, some members proposed amendments to the Reorganisation Bills which necessitated voting during the debate. However, amendments to clauses were taken by voice vote.

Interestingly, going by the mood of the Seemandhra legislators, a top Congress leader felt that Speaker’s efforts to hold a smooth debate might not fructify as some of the Seemandhra MLAs have openly announced that they would not allow discussion on the T-Bill until loopholes in it were rectified.

Source: Indian Express