HYDERABAD: The Call Money Sex racket issue that rattled the Telugu Desam Government in Andhra Pradesh was successfully diverted with Roja’s suspension for a year from the service of the House by Andhra Pradesh Assembly.
While the resolution adopted had said that the legislator was suspended from the service of the House, does it bar her from entering the premises of the Assembly, use her privileges as elected representative of the lower House of the legislature, stay in the MLA quarters, and utilise other benefits? Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu’s view that she would become ineligible for all privileges smacks more of a political vendetta rather than procedures of the House.
While the Speaker is supreme on the floor of the House, Ramakrishnudu’s new definition that the Government was supreme and that the Speaker also could not alter a decision taken by the majority members of the House gave rise to new questions on the parliamentary procedures. Now the Assembly perhaps will debate this too and set the record straight.
That said, talking of politics, the YSR Congress, the main opposition, has slipped into a tight spot with the suspension of its stormy petrel R K Roja.Didn’t YCP understand that something like this is coming? If it has not anticipated this, it surely needs to go back to school and learn a few tricks of the trade, especially when Chandrababu Naidu chooses to go on the offensive.
The Opposition should understand that the TDP took up a topic to discuss Ambedkar, only to push the YSRC into a corner and portray that the opposition had no respect for a great leader of this country.Ironically, the YSR Congress walked into the trap. Ambedkar is such an epic personality that none of the ideologies he had postulated need a debate. They have been well accepted by all sections of India society. Nobody disputed Ambedkar’s ideology. He is India’s one of the most honourable scholars.
Where is the question of a debate on whatever he postulated?
By going aggressively on its own agenda, the YCP missed the penalty kick and scored a self goal in the soccer match set in the backdrop of call money sex racket. The TDP, which was facing a red card at the very entry, suddenly got a wildcard entry and scored a goal in this issue, swerving the game to parliamentary procedures.
The political amphitheater in AP Assembly isn’t letting an Androcles and lion fable to be enacted on the floor. For, neither side is kind to the other nor did either help the other at any point in time and there is no scope for either to condescend to the other.
With both the TDP and YSRC at daggers with each other, and always baying for the blood of each other, the question of revoking the suspension on Roja, comparable only with Revanth Reddy in TDP, doesn’t arise.
Well, YS Jaganmohan Reddy is making it an issue by meeting the President of India Pranab Mukherjee who is on his southern sojourn in Secunderabad. The matter of Roja’s suspension is tricky in its nature. The Assembly’s decision is usually beyond judicial review. The sanctions listed out by the Legislative Affairs Minister are, however, causing concern among the members of the Opposition.
Jagan, on his part, warned the Speaker, oblivious of its repercussions, to revoke the suspension. Else, the opposition would stall the proceedings of the House. The Government by having raids conducted on all pawn brokers and private money lenders, successfully diverted the public attention from the Call Money Sex Racket in Vijayawada in which the noose is actually tight around the TDP’s neck.
Instead of hauling the ruling dispensation over the coals, the Opposition preferred to cause a ruckus in the Assembly by inadvertently allowing the government to wield the stick. Now, how does Jagan draw the public attention toward call money sex racket becomes intriguing. The Government could successfully obfuscate the new capital building issue and the challenges around it. It surfaces only when a more asphyxiating issue comes to the fore.
Would the sex racket that has its roots in call money be taken to its logical end ever? Given the obstinate nature of Jagan and the fact that typical of a Machiavellian politico Chandrababu Naidu is, the “natural course” of such issues and their “logical end” are not unfamiliar to people.
