VIJAYAWADA: The YSR Congress is set to win a majority in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council once the elections are completed for the 14 MLCs. While three MLC seats fell vacant under the MLAs' quota, the remaining 11 will be filled under local bodies.
As the YSR Congress has an absolute majority in the Legislative Assembly and also won more than 80 per cent of seats in the local bodies, the ruling party is expected to bag all the 14 MLC seats.
The YSRC has 12 MLCs including 11 elected by MLAs and one from Graduates' Constituency. It also has the support of six MLCs nominated by the Governor and once the elections for the 14 MLCs are over, it will have a total of 32 MLCs in the 58-MLC Council.
In fact, three Council seats under MLAs' quota had fallen ell vacant by May, 2021, after the retirement of Council Chairman MA Shariff of the TDP, Somu Veerraju of the BJP and DC Govinda Reddy of the YSRC. However, the Election Commission put off the biennial election in view of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic.
Similarly, with the court stalling the declaration of results of the local body polls, the MLC seats under that category were also not filled. However, with the results of the local body elections declared and the prevalence of COVID coming down to a great extent, YSRC leaders, particularly MLC aspirants, are hoping that the Election Commission will soon fill the vacancies.
The opposition TDP, which had majority in the Council for more than two years after the formation of the YSRC Government, stalled some crucial Bills including the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bills, which would have enabled the government to set up three capitals with Visakhapatnam as Executive, Amaravati as Legislative and Kurnool as the Judicial capitals.
Now, with the YSRC getting the majority once the 14 vacancies were filled, leaders of the ruling party say that the administration will go smoothly as the TDP could not create any roadblocks to Bills.