Congress to confront government on key bills

Confrontation between the government and the Opposition on the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill and the Compensatory Afforesta-tion Fund Bill in the Rajya Sabha becomes certain during the week as the Congress plans to raise these issues aggressively after the Question Hour and Zero Hour in the Upper House.

While reiterating the party’s stand on these two issues, Congress spokes-man and former Union minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said the Oppo-sition wanted a voting on a private member’s bill demanding to grant a special category status to Andhra Pradesh, which was promised by the then PM Manmohan Singh on February 20, 2014. But there was no progress on it in the last two years.

The government is trying to scuttle the bill by avoiding a voting fearing that the government’s defeat on it would send a wrong message, he said. Most of the parties in the Rajya Sabha including the SP, Left, JD(U) and even the BJP ally TDP have been backing the special package for the newly-created Andhra Pradesh, he said.

The Congress has no objection to the government if it brings a bill on special package for Andhra, Mr Ramesh said.

The private member’s bill was very simple — implement the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2014 and implement Dr Singh’s assurance to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh for a period of five years. But for the last two, this government has not done anything, he charged.

The ruling BJP was sure to suffer a political defeat if the private member’s bill had passed. And therefore it ensured that the bill should not be passed.