Jagan insists on LOP status

Vijayawada: The letter written by former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy demanding that he be recognised as the leader of opposition (LOP) and claiming that it was statutory in terms of law as defined in its specific application to the state of Andhra Pradesh has led to a major debate.

Minister of Legislative Affairs Pyyavula Keshav would be addressing a media conference on Wednesday to expose the “weak and baseless argument” of the YSRCP.

Jagan in his letter addressed to the Speaker said that under Section 12-B of the Andhra Pradesh Payment of Salaries and Pension and Removal of Disqualification act 1953, he should be recognised as LOP. But legal experts claim that this act is not applicable to him and his argument was not valid. They say that this rule is applicable when there are two or more parties in opposition to the Government having the same numerical strength. In such a case, the Speaker can recognise any one of the leaders of such parties as LOP and such recognition would be final. 

Still Jagan feels that there was no ambiguity in the law and he should be recognised as LOP. Once when a similar situation arose in Parliament the legal luminary Mukul Rohtagi said that the Constitutional position is clear that to get LOP status a party should have 10% of the members whether it is Parliament or Assembly. In this case Jagan’s party has only 11 members as against the required number of 17.5 members.

Jagan also argued that there were precedents. He said in 1984, P Upendra of TDP was granted the position of LOP in Lok Sabha though TDP had only 30 members out of 543. But the fact is that Upendra was recognised only as leader of TDP parliamentary party, not as LOP. Another example quoted by Jagan was that of P Janardhan Reddy in 1994 when Congress got only 26 members out of 294. But again it is not correct since P Janardhan Reddy was leader of Congress Legislature Party and not LOP.

Jagan also took objection that he was not called for oath immediately after the Chief Minister. But the rules say that first the leader of the House is administered the oath followed by cabinet and then LOP. Same procedure was followed in AP Assembly and also in Parliament during the last two days, the legal experts pointed out.