Offence is the best defence?

TRS in aggressive mode as Assembly meets today

Hyderabad: The monsoon session of the Telangana Assembly which would begin on Wednesday will witness a new kind of aggression. Normally Opposition parties go on the offensive and try to corner the government on various issues. This time, however, the ruling TRS wants to launch an offensive against the Opposition right from day one.

While the Opposition parties are getting ready to raise issues like farmers suicides, change of design and re-engineering of irrigation projects, Warangal encounter and resurgence of Maoists activities in the State and failure to update the list of martyrs who died during the agitation for separate state,

the ruling party has decided to counter the Opposition by taking the stand that the opposition has no right to talk about farmers suicides since it was the successive governments in the undivided AP that were responsible for pushing the farmers into such dire conditions.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao who addressed the legislature party meeting on Tuesday asked the MLAs to attend the entire session without fail and also remain alert and come prepared to speak on various populist schemes introduced by the government during the last 15 months.

Commenting on farmers’ suicides, he said the Telangana government took several decisions to benefit the agricultural community in the last one year, including the recently announced ex-gratia hike. We are leaving no stone unturned to instill confidence in farmers and save them. But unfortunately suicides are taking place.

Can’t the Opposition parties, particularly the Communists, notice suicides occurring in the neighboring state or states, KCR asked. ASHA workers are on agitation mode in the neighboring state,

but no party bothers about them, he said.He told the meeting that the government on its own would initiate a discussion on the farmers’ suicides and would highlight various schemes like Mission Kakatiya,

Grama Jyothi, Water Grid, etc, which are meant for the welfare of the farmers. KCR suggested to the members to highlight government’s achievements. It is learnt that on the issue of re-designing of projects, the government may even arrange a 3D presentation for the Opposition members.

As the Congress is likely to raise the issue of attack on Congress MLA Ramamohan Reddy by TRS MLA G Balaraju at the Mahbubnagar ZP meeting, the government is contemplating to ask Balaraju to apologise.While the Opposition is unlikely to raise the cash-for-vote issue,

the ruling party does not want to give a chance to the firebrand TDP leader A Revanth Reddy to attack the government. To counter him, the ruling party may rake up the issue. In case the Opposition remains united on every issue and tries to stall the proceedings, the government proposes to suspend such members.

Reacting to the Opposition demand that the session be held for 15 days, the Legislative Affairs minister T Harish Rao said the government was ready to discuss all issues till the Opposition gets tired. “Last time we discussed certain issues till the Opposition said that they were exhausted,” he said.

Harish said the Assembly would adjourn on Tuesday after passing condolence resolutions to former President Abdul Kalam and MLA Krishna Reddy who died recently. Later the Business Advisory Committee would meet to finalise the business.

The House would reassemble on September 29 after Bakrid and Ganesh immersion.Meanwhile, the government has announced the name of Neti Vidyasagar as the Deputy Chairman in the Legislative Council.