No facility to attend nature's call in Assembly, says Eatala

Hyderabad: The issue of non-allotment of legislature party office to the BJP led to heated arguments between the BJP and the ruling party leaders as the Saffron party member Eatala Rajender said that they could not even attend nature's call due to lack of room.

The issue came up during the discussion on the budget in the Assembly on Wednesday when the Speaker P Srinivas Reddy asked Eatala Rajender to speak. Rajender said that no room was allocated for the BJLP, which has three members and neither the party leaders were called for the BAC meeting. Stating that they come to the Assembly with lunch boxes but there is no provision for them to sit nor to attend nature's call and talk to the party leaders which is insulting for the MLAs. Reacting to State Finance Minister T Harish Rao, Eatala said that it was decided to allocate room only to the parties with five members in the House. Rajender said that apart from rules there are some conventions. In the past, single members like Jayaprakash Narayan, CPI and others were given a room.

Intervening on this, the Legislative Affairs Minister V Prashanth Reddy questioned Rajender's demand stating that the Speaker can take a decision on this but having an argument for his facilities was not a good practice and the member should learn the rules first. Responding to this, Rajender said that his party had met the speaker several times over this issue, but there was no response and hence he was forced to raise the issue in the assembly.

Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav entered the debate and said that the BJP member was raising such issues to get out of the House. The members can approach the Speaker on this and it was not proper to discuss issues like these, he said. Later, the Speaker asked the BJP members to meet him in his chambers for a discussion.