The Seemandhra-dominated Andhra Pradesh assembly on Thursday rejected the AP Reorganization Bill, 2013. Amid pandemonium and with almost all the members having converged at the well of the House, speaker Nadendla Manohar put the resolution moved by chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy opposing the division of the state to voice vote and declared it as passed. The 294-member assembly has an effective strength of 279 members of which 160 are from the Seemandhra region, including the speaker and the chief minister. The bill will now be sent back to President Pranab Mukherjee after which it is slated to be tabled in Parliament in the first fortnight of February. The House was adjourned for an hour minutes after it met at 9am in view of protests by the members. While the Seemandhra members rushed to the well of the House demanding that the resolution moved by the CM be put to vote, those from the Telangana region did the same with the demand that there should be no voting. The House met again at 11am, observed two-minute silence on the occasion of the death anniversary of Mahatama Gandhi, after which it was adjourned again.
At 11.30 pm, in what appears to be a coordinated strategy between the speaker, the chief minister and the Seemandhra legislators, all the members from that region converged at the well of the House and formed a wall around the speaker even as Manohar read out the resolution, put it to voice vote and declared it as having been passed. All this was over in a matter of minutes. Immediately, the speaker adjourned the assembly sine die. In the meantime, several Telangana MLAs tried to rush towards the speaker and prevent him from going ahead with the voice vote. Finding the access blocked by the Seemandhra members, TRS legislator T Harish Rao tried to jump over legislative secretary S Raja Sadaram's table and fell down in the process. By the time he could recover, the voting was over. TRS legislator K Taraka Rama Rao charged that the chief minister and speaker connived to get the voice vote passed. "However, this will have no bearing on the Telangana bill as the opinion of the state assembly was not binding on the Centre and the bill will still be passed by Parliament," he said.
In the end, both the groups expressed satisfaction with the day's developments. The Seemandhra legislators said that Parliament should not take up the bill as it has been rejected by the state assembly. However, the Telangana members said that the debate on the bill has been concluded in the state assembly and the bill sent back to the Centre for the consideration of Parliament.
Text of the govt resolution
"The House while rejecting the AP Reorganisation bill, 2013, resolves to request the honourable President of India not to recommend the AP Reorganisation Bill, 2013, for introduction in the Parliement as the Bill seeks to bifurcate the State of Andhra Pradesh without any reason/basis and without arriving at a consensus, in utter disregard to the linguistic and cultural homogeneity and economic viability of both regions. The bill also completely ignores the very basis of formation of State of Andhra Pradesh, the first linguistic State created in Independent India."
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