Hyderabad: A marathon Zero Hour in Assembly

Hyderabad: Assembly Speaker P Srinivas Reddy on Monday conducted a marathon Zero Hour allowing as many as 54 members to speak on issues concerning their constituencies.

He allowed almost all the Opposition and majority of the ruling party members to speak in the Zero Hour mentions, which ended at 1.10 pm. This was the first time during this session that the Zero Hour was taken up by the Speaker.

A majority of ruling party members raised issues of degree colleges, irrigation projects, traffic police stations, roads. The AIMIM members raised issue of repairs and maintenance of mosques in the wake of Ramzan month and wanted the government to allow shops to be kept open till 1 am.

Cantonment MLA G Sayanna supported the comments of the Municipal Administration Minister KT Rama Rao on the Local Military Authorities. However, he said that the government respects the Army personnel. He recalled that the government provided jobs to the Army martyrs, including Colonel Santosh Babu who lost his life in Galwan valley at the China border. He took exception to the comments of BJP leaders criticising the minister.

Earlier in the day, the Speaker had asked members to speak during zero hour if they could not get a chance during the question hour. Some members were lucky as they got the opportunity twice to raise their issues. Those who got opportunities twice included A Ramesh, Rajender Reddy.