The three BJP MLAs – T. Raja Singh, Eatala Rajender and M. Raghunandan Rao will take up a public protest to “save the Constitution and and protect democracy” at the Indira Partk on March 17 to highlight the “injustice” meted out to them in the Legislative Assembly by suspending them all through the budget session.
“Former MLAs, MLCs, corporators, ZPTC members and other public representatives will be participating in the protest from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” informed Mr. Rajender at a press conference on Tuesday at the party office. “Yet another bad precedent has been set by the Speaker by not allowing to participate in the budget session despite HC proddings,” said Mr. Rajender.
He was especially pained that the trio was suspended through an intervention by a minister, who ridiculed those fighting for the separate state earlier. “Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao’s attitude and behaviour in the Assembly is making a mockery of the democracy as he does not wish to have courts or the Constitution, so that he can rule like a monarch,” he charged.
Mr. Raghunandan Rao said it is very “unfortunate” and a “black day” in Indian democracy that the Speaker has disregarded the High Court orders advising him to take a decision rising above party politics. The “undemocratic” manner in which the House has been conducting the budget session without the BJP members, who themselves have been elected by the people, sets a “poor example to the democratic polity”, he said.
KCR should realise that making use of brute of majority to throw out the BJP MLAs “will have its consequences and the boot could be on the other foot soon”. Mr. Raja Singh said the “strong arm of KCR” is quite visible in the decision taken by the Speaker and claimed the latter was wary of his erstwhile colleague Mr. Rajender “exposing” the government misdeeds.
In a separate development, party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar demanded that the government take back the sacked 12,000 education volunteers, 22,000 scavengers and 1,700 staff nurses too. He welcomed the field assistants being taken back into service as announced by KCR in the Assembly and wanted a similar policy to be adopted to other employees too.
