Govt mulls new Parliamentary Secretary system

Hyderabad: In a bid to bypass the court directions which struck down the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries, the Telangana State government is mulling to bring Legislation-oriented Parliamentary Secretary System in the State. Under the new system, the secretaries will take part actively in the preparation of new legislations along with the ministers. For this, government is preparing a new legislation to amend the existing Assembly Business Rules in consultation with legal and constitutional experts.

In the earlier system, the secretaries were appointed in the rank of Cabinet Minister to look after the government affairs. The High Court struck down the appointments objecting the cabinet strength exceeded beyond the permissible limit of 17. In 2016, the TRS government appointed 6 parliamentary secretaries increasing the total number of Cabinet Minister rank posts to 23.          
Officials said that the government was conducting the study of parliamentary secretary system enforced in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand where the two States brought new legislations to avoid legal complications in the appointment.

 Along the same lines, the Telangana government wanted to appoint the parliamentary secretaries without any legal hurdles. Since it was not possible to accommodate all senior leaders in his cabinet, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has come out with the idea of allotting parliamentary secretary post to the MLA-elected senior leaders .  

Under the new proposal, the parliamentary secretaries will avail all benefits extended to government whips and chief whips (equal to Cabinet Minister) and the salaries will be drawn from the Assembly Secretariat. In a month or two, government will conclude whether to enforce the new legislation oriented parliamentary secretary system.