AP Govt's austerity drive goes for a toss

HYDERABAD: The government of cash-strapped Andhra Pradesh on Friday began holding a two-day orientation programme for the legislators of the state Assembly at a five-star hotel here to impart best parliamentary practices to them by spending around Rs 10 lakh.

Interestingly, the first day session of the programme, which was aimed at making the lawmakers know about the proceedings of the House, took place in an ostentatious manner exactly a few days after the state government's directive for austerity measures to contain public expenditure.

After participating in the training classes, the MLAs were taken to a guided tour to Falaknuma Palace, located in the old city of Hyderabad, in the evening. Later, the legislators were entertained in the form of cultural programmes.

Though some of the members of the YSRC and MLCs of the Congress also took part in the first day session, many of the lawmakers did not show much interest in the speeches of the speakers, who include Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu.

When former Lok Sabha secretary-general Subash Kashyap was delivering his speech, several of the TDP MLAs were not even present in the hall. The reason for this is that their boss Chandrababu Naidu was not present at that time. Interestingly, by the time Naidu returned to the hall after an official function, almost all the TDP members were present.

A majority of the members did not evince much interest to elicit information from the speakers on matters relating to rules, procedures and parliamentary practices.

At one point of time, the session appeared to be turning into a battleground between the YSRC and TDP members when some of the MLAs of the YSRC expressed their displeasure over Ministers not adhering to protocol while visiting their respective Assembly segments.

For instance, when Venkaiah Naidu tried to answer the posers of members after his address, some of the YSRC MLAs asked the Union Minister whether it was fair on the part of TDP government to ignore the members of the YSRC during official programmes.

When asked about his experience on the first day session, YSRC MLA from Addanki Gottipati Ravi Kumar told that he welcomed such training programmes as they would educate members about the parliamentary practices. But, at the same time, Ravi Kumar expressed unhappiness over the way some of the Ministers and ruling members were not adhering to protocol while visiting the segments of YSRC MLAs.

Interestingly, even some of the senior Ministers felt that simply organising workshops is not suffice to inculcate good parliamentary practices among MLAs.