Seven Bills, including varsity recruitment, introduced

Hyderabad: The state government introduced seven bills in the Legislative Assembly on Monday. The Telangana Goods and Service Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2022, the Azamabad Industrial Area (Termination and Regulation of Leases) (Amendment) Bill, 2022, the Telangana Municipal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022, the Telangana Public Employment (Regulation of Age of Superannuation) (Amendment) Bill, 2022, the University of Forestry Telangana Bill, 2022, the Telangana Universities Common Recruitment Board Bill, 2022 and the Telangana Motor Vehicles Taxation (Amendment) Bill, 2022.

Respective ministers move the bills in the House. The House will debate and pass these bills on Tuesday.

The government has decided to amend Section 17 of the Telangana Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1963 as the existing procedure to amend the Schedules of the Act is time consuming and cumbersome. At present, the changes can be made through orders only after tabling them in the House. With the new amendment, changes can be made directly and they can be tabled in the House later.

A bill was moved to take back the lands allotted in Azamabad Industrial Area in the heart of Hyderabad city as many of the old units have stopped functioning while new units have diversified to service business and other activities.

"Therefore, it was felt necessary to safeguard the interests of all the persons in occupation of plots and monetise the valuable lands in the heart of Hyderabad city," the bill says.

A bill providing for setting up of Telangana state universities common recruitment board for direct recruitment to the posts of teaching and non-teaching staff except medical university, was moved in the House.

A bill to include Director of Medical Education and Additional Director of Medical Education among the categories of professors, associate professors and assistant professors of government medical colleges for the purpose of superannuation age and raise the superannuation age from 61 years to 65 years was introduced in the House.

A bill to amend GHMC Act, 1955 increasing co-option members from 5 to

15 has been moved. Accordingly, the number of co-option members having special knowledge or experience in Municipal Administration will be increased from 3 to 9 and number of persons belonging to Minorities sections will be increased from 2 to 6. Similarly, the number of co-option members in all other municipal corporations from 5 to 10.

Also another amendment was proposed to include Rajya Sabha members as electors (voters) in the election of chairpersons/ mayors and vice chairpersons/ deputy mayors in urban local bodies.

Another amendment was proposed increasing the time period from 3 years to 4 years for moving No Confidence Motion against chairpersons/ mayors in 129 ULBs (urbal local bodies).

As per existing Act, councillors/ corporators in existing 129 ULBs can move no confidence motions after January 26, 2023, as three years term will end. The bill says councillors/ corporators in various ULBs are gearing themselves to move no confidence motions and in most of the cases, the reason behind such move is just to use it as a leverage to threaten or blackmail the existing incumbents. As per TS Panchayat Raj Act, 2018, the time period to move no confidence motions is four years. Now the government wants to extend the same to ULBs by amending TS Municipal Act.