New Delhi : Amid doubts about passage by a disrupted Parliament, the Union cabinet okayed a controversial legislation that seeks to create the separate state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh.
At a special meeting, the Union cabinet approved the Bill that has been rejected by the Andhra Pradesh assembly.
As per the established procedure, this would now go to the president, and then brought before Parliament.
While clearing the Bill the cabinet has tried to pacify the Seemandhra leaders and decided to grant special financial packages to backward areas. But the chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy’s demand to make Hyderabad, the prosperous IT hub, a union territory with its revenues divided between Telangana and Seemandhra, has been rejected. Instead, as planned originally, Hyderabad will be a shared capital for ten years between the old and new states, after which it will belong to Telangana.
The cabinet clearance came on a day when the Supreme Court also rejected a clutch of petitions seeking a stay on the creation of Telangana.
It is expected that the bill would come to Parliament next week, and then the course of events would decide the fate of the new state.
There is a strong view within the Congress party, that in order to ensure decorum in Parliament, the two presiding officers should take action against individual members who disrupt the house.
Then the passage of the legislations could be facilitated.” It is the responsibility of the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha chairman to ensure that order prevails in the respective houses, and they should be firm,” said a senior Congress leader.
However, the counter- view is that the Congress party is not able to convince its members on the T- issue and this is the root cause of disruption of Parliament.
Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy had embarrassed the party by staging a protest in the heart of Delhi this week; some union ministers from Andhra Pradesh had joined him.
On Friday, both houses did not transact any business for the third successive day: the supporters of a unified Andhra Pradesh paralysed the Lok Sabha whereas the Rajya Sabha remained dysfunctional because of demands that the cause of Tamil fishermen be discussed first, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh come to the house to respond to the members’ queries.
The UPA- 2 is making a determined bid to complete the formalities for the creation of the separate Telangana state, and the union home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, whose ministry is charged with the responsibility for getting the legislation through Parliament, made it clear that there was no going back on this course of action.
