Does Jagan Mohan Reddy deserve Leader of Opposition status? Debate rages on in Andhra Pradesh

Also Read: Jagan requests Andhra Speaker to recognise him as leader of Opposition

Need at least 18 seats

Jagan Mohan Reddy won only 11 seats including his own in the recent Assembly election. According to one argument, he should have 18 seats to get the LoP status which carries several privileges like getting priority after the leader of the House, the chief minister. The LoP carries Cabinet status.

The TDP has taken serious objection to the issues that Jagan Mohan Reddy had raised in his letter.

TDP leaders said neither in the Lok Sabha nor in any Assembly in any state, an Opposition party leader with less than 10 percent of the votes, was given the official status of LoP.

According to senior advocates, there is no such rule or Act in the Assemblies cite that one should have one-tenth of the seats in the House to get LoP status.

“All Assemblies follow the tradition that is established in Lok Sabha where the largest Opposition party is given the Opposition status if it has 10 percent or more seats,” said senior advocate and former BJP legislator N Ramachandra Rao in Hyderabad.

Also Read: YSRCP to initiate contempt proceedings against Andhra government

The guidelines

In Lok Sabha, the Speakers have given guidelines in the past that for a leader to get the LoP status, he should get one-tenth of the seats.

The state Assemblies also use these guidelines as the basis and accord the LoP status to the largest Opposition party only when it gets more than 10 percent of the seats

But Jagan Mohan Reddy said in his letter that since there is no act or rule that makes it mandatory that one should have 10 percent of seats to get LoP status, he should be conferred the official status of LoP in the best interests of democracy.

Another advocate who did not want his name quoted said that if the Speaker so chooses, he could appoint the leader of the largest Opposition party in the house as LoP even if he does not have one-tenth of the seats of the house.

Since there is only one Opposition party in the House, there was nothing wrong with appointing Jagan Mohan Reddy as LoP as there was no Act that bars the leader of an Opposition party from being appointed as LOP just because he does not have 10 percent of the seats.

Also Read: TDP’s Ayyannapatrudu elected Speaker of Andhra Assembly

Only Opposition party

In Andhra Pradesh, even though there are Jana Sena and BJP, they cannot be considered Opposition parties since they are part of the government.

If they were not part of the government, one could be recognised as the official Opposition party of the NDA alliance. But in the present house, there is only one Opposition party, the YSRCP.

In Telangana too, in the second Assembly, Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka was stripped of his official status of LoP after the strength of the Congress went below 12 — one-tenth of the 119-member House — after two-thirds of the members of the grand old party merged into the BRS legislature party.

The denial of the LOP status to Mallu still rankles the Congress.

Recently, government advisor and former minister Mohammad Shabbir Ali said former chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao had divested Mallu of the LoP status by bringing down the strength of the Congress below 10 percent.

(Edited by Muhammed Fazil)

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