Now it is the turn of Congress to oppose the proposal to increase the number of assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Congress outgoing member in Rajya Sabha made it clear that his party was opposed to singling out Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for increasing the Assembly strength.
He said the ruling parties in the two states, TDP and TRs, are encouraging defections with the hope that the Assembly seats would go up and all the defectors and party’s defeated members could be accommodated. He cited this as the reason for the indiscriminate encouragement of defections by two parties in power.
Speaking in Rajya Sabha, Jairam Ramesh, who represents Andhra Pradesh in the Upper House, said Congress would not support the move to hike the number of seats in Assemblies of the two Telugu states. BJP leaders from the two states have also reportedly conveyed their opposition to increase the number as it would benefit the ruling parties more rather than the BJP.
Referring to union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu’s enthusiasm in working for increase of seats, he asked why Venkaiah had been silent on the increase of seats in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh Assemblies, who had been created a decade ago.
Talking about many smaller states, he said while Kerala had 140 seats, the strength of Jharkhand Assembly was just 80. “When West Bengal, a state with 10 crore population has 294 seats, Telugu states with a combined population of eight crore have sufficient number of seats, 294. There is no need to increase the strength of Assemblies of these states,” he said dampening the spirit of chief ministers Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrasekhar Rao.
Both chief ministers have kept the dissension under control by promising to accommodate them in new seats the state Assemblies are going to have after the delimitation. In many constituencies, original party leaders, who are defeated in 2014 elections, raised objections to the admission of their rivals into the party just because they were MLAs. Both chief ministers pacified them showing the proposed hike in the Assembly strength.
According to sources, union law ministry has reportedly conveyed to the home ministry that it was not possible to single out AP and TS for delimitation purpose, they had to wait till 2026.
