President likely to extend T Bill deadline by just 1 week!

President Pranab Mukherjee is likely to extend the deadline given to AP Assembly over the T Bill by just a week, unconfirmed media reports from Delhi say. The AP Assembly wasted most of the time the President gave from December 12 to January 23. While some Seemandhra leaders started the demand for extension to ‘kill’ the T Bill from being introduced in the Parliament session, Telangana MLAs and MPs wrote to the President not to extend the deadline. However, the President is said to be taking the middle road by just giving enough time to discuss the bill so that he and the UPA is not targeted politically later in Andhra. Media reports suggest he will give just a week so that the T Bill introduction in Parliament is not jeopardized. The Union Home Ministry is said to have conveyed to the President it’s recommendation that the date can be extended till February 4 or 5. They also seem to have told the President that they would need an extra 8-10 days after that to prepare the Bill to be moved in Parliament. This allows the President to extend the date by 7-10 days at most.

The AP state chief secretary PK Mohanty, who has been playing ball with the Andhra CM, had earlier written to the President seeking an extended deadline for approval of the Andhra Pradesh (Reorganisation) Bill by the state legislature, citing the nearly 4,000 amendments proposed by various MLAs.

More recently, a revised letter was received from the state, conveying that the number of amendments sought had risen from 4,000 to 9,004. Insisting that a reasonable timeframe was needed to study and rationalise the amendments, the state chief secretary sought a four-week extension of the original January 23 deadline.

According to Union home ministry officials, a four-week extension would make February 20 the outer limit for the assembly to clear the Telangana bill, and this would be co-terminus with the end of concluding session of the 15th Lok Sabha. “Allowing such a long extension would mean that the bill would not get Parliament’s nod, thus making the creation of Telangana impossible under the current regime,” a senior official said.

“Refusing an extension is not advisable since the demand is valid under the Constitution, but given that we need an estimated 8-10 days to prepare the bill to be moved in Parliament, the home ministry has forwarded the chief secretary’s request with its recommendations to extend the deadline latest till February 4 or 5, so that the bill can be moved in Parliament in the concluding week of winter session, allowing enough time for its discussion and passage by both the Houses.