Congress, TDP to stall House on defections

Hyderabad: The Congress and the TD on Saturday decided to stall Assembly proceedings from Monday to press their demand for the immediate disqualification of MLAs who defected to the TRS. They will continue stalling the House till they get a favourable response from Speaker S. Madhusudana Chary.

“We know there are several problems concerning the people which need immediate attention. We will raise them, but disqualification of the defectors is our prime concern. We won’t allow the House to function with such a blatant violation of democratic principles. We will stall the House from Monday till we get a response from the Speaker,” said Mr K. Jana Reddy, Leader of the Opposition, after a meeting of the Congress LP.  He said it was sickening to see the defectors sitting on treasury benches wearing pink khanduvas.

After the TDLP meeting Mr Dayakar Rao said, “How can we tolerate Talasani Srinivasa Yadav, Teegala Krishna Reddy and Challa Dharma Reddy who were elected on TD tickets sitting on TRS benches?”

“There are many problems confronting the state. That shows the callousness of the TRS government. We will raise the issues but before that we want action against the defectors,” Mr Dayakar Rao said.

Both parties expected that during the Budget Session seats would be allotted to members as this is required whenever voting takes place. However, to their surprise no seating allotment was done. This, according to Mr Dayakar Rao, was done to avoid embarrassment to Mr Srinivas Yadav, who would otherwise have to sit in the benches marked for the treasury side.