New room allotted to Leader of the Opposition K. Chandrasekhar Rao in a corner of the Assembly lobbies.
| Photo Credit: By Arrangement
The Opposition party in Telangana, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), has taken strong exception to demean the position of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) by allotting a small room instead of the one usually allocated to a leader in that position. The issue was represented to Speaker of the Assembly Gaddam Prasad Kumar.
A delegation of BRS leaders led by Balkonda MLA and former Minister for Legislative Affairs Vemula Prashanth Reddy explained to the Speaker how the previous BRS Government gave the chambers, that was allotted to LoP for years, to M. Bhatti Vikramarka even when the Congress party had only five members.
The room allotted now is only one-fourth in the size of the chambers that was being allotted for years. Objecting to the change in the chambers allotted to LoP and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao from the one allotted in the inaugural session in December last year, the BRS delegation requested the Speaker to club the two adjacent rooms to make it spacious, although it would be smaller than the chambers of LoP allotted for long.
Speaking at the media point along with party legislator Padi Kaushik Reddy, Pochampally Srinivas Reddy and others, Mr. Prashanth Reddy said that it was injustice to allot such a small room to a party having 39 MLAs. It was not sufficient to meet even a small group of MLAs in the newly-allotted room.
“We were shocked to find the change in the LoP chambers as we entered the lobbies today morning”, he said after the Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan’s traditional address on Thursday, adding that the government’s focus appeared to be not on the governance but on the victimisation of the Opposition.
BRS raises issue of PSOs to Congress leaders who faced poll debacle
He stated that they had also made a similar request to the Legislative Affairs Minister D. Sridhar Babu. Mr. Prashanth Reddy further stated that they had also brought to the notice of the Speaker that the government provided Personal Security Officers (PSO) to the Congress leaders who were defeated in the recent Assembly elections and denied the same to BRS leaders who defeated them to be elected as MLAs. He cited the example of Sangareddy MLA Chinta Prabhakar.
They stated that while the officials were not following protocol in the matter of Mr. Prabhakar, they were giving preference to defeated candidate T. Jayaprakash (Jagga) Reddy of the Congress in every official event and provided police escort to Mr. Jagga Reddy instead of Mr. Prabhakar. The BRS legislators also made request to the Director General of Police to look into the issue.
