The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : House should have more working days: Speaker

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 13, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

House should have more working days: Speaker

By Our Staff Reporter

GUNTUR, DEC. 12. The number of working days of the State Legislature must go up, while making judicious use of the available time, the Speaker of Andhra Pradesh Assembly, K. R. Suresh Reddy, said addressing the members of the Guntur Bar Association.

"We are making genuine effort to increase the total time for the legislators to discuss people's problems in the Assembly, though decreasing working days was a common trend seen in legislatures of Commonwealth countries the world over," Mr. Suresh Reddy said on Sunday.

He unveiled the portrait of the former Speaker, Nissankararao Venkata Ratnam, in the association hall Nyaya Seva Sadan.

At times some people consume extra time to highlight the people's problems effectively, but in a democracy waste of Assembly time cannot be completely done away with, he opined.

In the olden days there were more number of legislators from among the lawyers' community, which saved the time of the House with quality discussions to the point, he observed.

Calling upon lawyers to interact with the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee whenever its members visited the district, he said that their experience could be shared with the panel members to help the legislature take better decisions for the common good of people.

The committees proved to be very effective in the past two decades and there was need to strengthen them, he added. He passed on the request of the Guntur Bar Association to set up a bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court to the Minister for Cooperation, Kanna Lakshmi Narayana.

He said it was the prerogative of the Government to deal with the request and he would extend all help to set up one if the Government so decided.

The association president, P. Lakshmi Narayana Reddy, detailed the service rendered by the late Nissankararao Venkata Ratnam, to the people as their representative and to the judicial fraternity.

The District and Sessions Judge, M. Venkateswara Reddy, the Guntur-I MLA, Nabur Subhani, were also present on the occasion.

Cooperation sought

Earlier, at a press conference at the Inspection Bungalow, he said that it was essential for all political parties to cooperate with the chairman of the house to properly manage the time of the Assembly.

There were 143 first time MLAs in the House, but not much time was being lost as they had rich experience in dealing with people's problems, he said.

On increasing the time for the Question Hour, he remained non-committal and said that all efforts were being made to allocate full time for the Question Hour and complete it.

He inaugurated a 50-bed modern private hospital (Swathi Institute of Medical Sciences) at Kothapet in the city. He arrived an hour behind schedule at noon by road and left for Hyderabad soon after attending the programmes till afternoon.

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