Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has dropped the idea of appointing MLAs as parliamentary secretary. Non-inclusion of these posts from office of profit in the ordinance issued by the government indicates this.
After the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) came to power in 2014, Mr Rao appointed six parliamentary secretaries and issued the Government Order (GO). In December 2014, he had appointed MLAs D. Vinaya Bhaskar, Jalagam Venkat Rao, V. Srinivas Goud, G. Kishore Kumar, V. Satish Kumar and Kova Laxmi as parliamentary secretaries with cabinet rank and salaries on a par with cabinet ministers.
MLC Gutta Sukhender Reddy, who was then in the Congress as Nalgonda MP, and the then Telugu Desam MLA A, Revanth Reddy, now a Congress MP, approached the court against the appointments saying it was unconstitutional.
In 2015, the High Court struck down the GO appointing the parliamentary secretaries. Later, the Chief Minister decided to avoid the legal hurdles to exempt these posts from office of profit. He decided to appoint 17 TRS MLAs as parliamentary secretaries. The idea is that the parliamentary secretaries will be given the portfolios to assist the concerned ministers. Chhattisgarh and some other states have also appointed parliamentary secretaries. Mr Rao has decided to send some officials to study the system adopted by those state governments in appointing parliamentary secretaries.
To appoint MLAs as chairpersons of public undertakings (corporations) the state government issued an ordinance three days ago exempting 28 posts from office of profit. But the post of parliamentary secretary is not included in the list.
