ANDHRA  COUNCIL TO BE REVIVED

New Delhi, 27 December 2005

Hyderabad, December 28 (INFA): The recent passage of the Bill for the revival of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council has given hopes to many Congressmen and other aspirants seeking membership of the upper chamber of the State Legislature.

It is incidentally for the first time in the country that the Legislative Council of a State is being revived after it was abolished.  However, it will take time to constitute the Council since the next elections to Panchayati Raj bodies in the State are due in August / September, 2006 and the electoral rolls for teachers and graduates constituencies have to be drawn up.

The Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council has a chequered history, spanning almost five decades.  Parliament passed the Bill for the creation of the Council in 1957.  The Council was constituted in July 1958 with 90 members. 

Exactly 27 years later, Telugu Desam Party founder and the then, Chief Minister, N.T. Rama Rao got it abolished in May 1985, on the ground that it was redundant to have another Legislative forum for raising people’s problems.  Rao had also contended that the Council was a burden on the exchequer with annual expenditure of Rs.60 lakhs.  From 1958 to 1985, the Council was dominated by Congressmen.

But things changed when the TDP came to power in 1983 and the Congress-dominated Council became an irritant for NTR.  The TDP enjoyed two-thirds majority in the Assembly and could not reconcile to this “dichotomy”.  Both the Chairman and the Deputy Chairman of the Council belonged to the Congress and the TDP boss also found a strong critic in the then leader of the Opposition in the Council, K. Rosaiah. The TDP Government got a resolution adopted in the Assembly for abolition of the Legislative Council.

Meanwhile, the elaborate exercise recently undertaken by Telugu Desam Party (TDP) President N. Chandrababu Naidu to rejuvenate his party has turned out to be a damp squib. 

After the unprecedented debacle in 2004 Assembly and the Lok Sabha elections, the TDP desperately needed a thorough overhaul to play its role as the main Opposition party.  But, over the last 18 months since it lost power, the TDP’s performance has been lackluster. 

The Party was unable to launch any effective agitational programme to corner the Congress Government on major issues concerning the State and the people. 

Moreover, the Party could not put up a good show in the recent Municipal elections and the cooperative polls. The Party could gain control of only seven municipalities out of 98.  It could not capture a single Municipal Corporation out of 11 which went to the polls.

The Congress wrested control of a majority of primary agricultural cooperative societies and made a clean sweep of district cooperative central bank.  Apart from making noises on issues such as irrigation tenders scam, killing of TDP functionaries by Congress rivals and neglect of farmers and the Telangana region, the TDP has done precious little to infuse enthusiasm among the party’s rank and file. 

After a post-mortem of recent developments, Naidu took up revamp of the party.  The 123-member executive consists of eight Vice-Presidents, six General Secretaries, 42 Secretaries and 27 Organising Secretaries nine party Spokesmen and others. Same old faces have been retained. ---INFA