HYDERABAD: M Raghunandan Rao, who was among the three BJP MLAs suspended from the budget session of the Telangana Assembly, has claimed that the entire episode was pre-planned and done illegally.
Addressing mediapersons at the BJP office at Nampally on Tuesday, he said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had called Animal Husbandry Minister T Srinivas Yadav to his bench and handed him a paper and right after that Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy had asked T Harish Rao to sit down, when Yadav moved the suspension motion in the house.
He said that he, along with MLA E Rajender, was only standing in the third row and silently protesting against the government. He wanted to have a discussion on the state government's decision to skip the Governor’s address.
“When Raja Singh wanted to grab the attention of the Speaker to his plea, the latter had not even asked him to sit down. There were five Congress MLAs who had moved to the front row where CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka was standing and raising slogans as a protest. They were all raising slogans against the government. But only BJP MLAs were suspended,” he noted.
He said that what the Speaker has done was in violation of section 340 Sub-Clause 1 of the Assembly’s rules and practices, as he had not announced the names of the MLAs while moving the suspension motion, adding that there was no discussion on who was obstructing the proceedings of the house.
“They had planned it all just before the budget session with a clear intention to remove BJP MLAs from the house, just to suppress the voices of the opposition,” he has alleged, adding that the Speaker has used his discretion to violate the people’s representatives’ right to protest.