Former CM KCR Sits in Oppn Benches of Assembly After 20 Years

Hyderabad: Former chief minister and BRS president K. Chandrashekar Rao entered the Legislative Assembly for the first time as Leader of Opposition (LoP) here on Thursday.

Incidentally, Rao was sitting in the Opposition benches after a gap of 20 years. He last sat there as a BRS (then TRS) legislator from 2001 to 2004. Subsequently, as a two-time MP, he was a Lok Sabha member from 2004 to 2014. He returned to the Assembly in 2014 as Chief Minister.

Rao arrived in the House exactly at 12 noon on Thursday when Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka was delivering his Budget speech and sat for nearly two hours. He left the House when Bhatti was reading the last page of his 70-page speech.

Later, along with his party MLAs, Rao proceeded to the media point, where he lashed out at the Budget and left the Assembly premises without meeting anyone.

After the BRS lost power in December, the Assembly met twice but Rao skipped both sessions. The first session held on December 10, 2023, was to administer oath to newly-elected MLAs. Rao missed it as he had to undergo surgery after he was injured in a fall in his farmhouse at Erravalli on December 7.

Rao took oath as MLA on February 1 in the Speaker's chambers separately. Later, the Assembly met for a week from February 8 for a presentation of the vote-on-account Budget. Rao did not attend the session.

Although the ongoing session started on July 23, Rao attended on the third day. There is no clarity on whether Rao will attend the remaining days of the Budget session. BRS sources said that his chances of attending this session were quite remote.