A SLACK SHOW

The TRS was in office for four years, three months and four days, eight months short of finishing its full term. After its birth on June 2, 2014, the 119-member Telangana legislative assembly met for the first time on July 9 that year. It had nine sessions in 52 months with the last sitting on March 29, 2018—barely for a month a year. The sittings, for 25 days in 2014, 21 in 2015, 36 in 2016, 31 in 2017 and 13 in 2018, added up to 612 hours and 27 minutes over 126 days.

While the members made 858 speeches, an average of seven per MLA, and 71 bills were adopted, short discussions were just 18. Some 667 questions were answered orally; another 318 elicited written replies. Responses to another 432 questions by MLAs were placed on the table of the House.

Seldom were the debates fiery, much less acrimonious. But Speaker S. Madhusudana Chary expelled Congress MLAs K.V. Reddy and S.A. Sampath Kumar after the House passed a resolution punishing them for objectionable behaviour while Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan was addressing the House.

Relying on the ambivalence in rules, Chary put a decision on MLAs shifting loyalty from the TDP, Congress and BSP, as well as independents, to the ruling TRS, on the backburner, enabling the ruling party to increase its strength from 63 at the inaugural of the 119-seat assembly, to 90 by the time the House was dissolved.

While the anti-defection law states that those who resign from a party after an election will lose House membership, their disqualification rests with the Speaker. But there is no time limit for a Speaker to deliver his decision. Chary it seems was not wary of the dangerous precedent this set in electoral politics.