Bifurcation blues haunt Legislative Councils

Hyderabad: Bifurcation blues are continuing to haunt the Legislative Councils of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, with the Bifurcation Act itself adding to the confusion over composition of the Houses.

While Section 23 of the AP Re-organisation Act clearly states that there shall be 50 members for Seemandhra and 40 members for Telangana, the AP Council has exceeded its strength by two members.

Similarly when the Act states there shall be 17 members elected from the local body constituencies (municipalities and zilla parishads), Schedule 3 of the same Act states that there shall be 20 from this category and even gives the constituency-wise breakup for this.

This has resulted in confusion as the Election Commission is now vested with conduct of elections for the vacant MLC posts from the local body constituencies. Whether to conduct elections for 17 or 20 members is the question and whether to go by Section 23 and leave the 3rd schedule in the Act, the EC needs to identify which three constituencies need to be deleted and how.

“There is no confusion. The EC will go by the Section and conduct the elections to the vacant seats, I have already written to EC in this regard,” Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwarlal told this correspondent.

However, sources in EC said that confusion did exist regarding the specific seats. Added to this, the original Bill passed by Parliament over creation of the Legislative Council of AP in 2007 did put a cap on total strength of the Council (undivided AP) at 90. And in the AP Reorganisation Act the same strength was divided into two, giving 50 seats to AP and 40 to Telangana.

The Act passed by Parliament in February this year specifically mentioned which members should represent which particular state. However, this led to confusion as the allotment of members was done on their nativity.

Meanwhile, on the recommendations of the then Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan nominated three members to the combined Legislative Council. Mr Nandi Yellaiah, who was then a Rajya Sabha member, was also nominated as a member. However, he did not take oath and contested as a Lok Sabha candidate and won.

The other two Mr Kanteti Satyanarayana Raju and Ms T. Ratna Bai, who took oath in the combined Council in May. But there was no specific order of allotting them to a particular house.

Despite this they attended the first session of the AP Council recently and participated in the proceedings, thereby compounding the confusion.
With their participation, the strength of the AP Council rose to 52 though there is a cap of 50 as per the Reorganisation Act.

Sources said, “So far there is no official allotment of these two members to AP Council, we don’t know the consequences, even Legislative Council Chairman A. Chakrapani also seems to be not aware of this.”

There are even some lapses in the constitution of the Telangana Legislative Council too, said the source. The sanctioned strength of 40 members for the T Council should come into force when the Legislative Assembly has a strength of 120, which includes one nominated from the Anglo Indian community.

"That did not happen; as per the statute, Council strength should be always one third of the total strength of Assembly," said the source.

"There were some lapses, we don't know how it is going to be resolved; if at all any modifications or amendments have to be made it should be done by Parliament since Reorganisation Act was passed by it," said a senior official.