Telangana Bill with documents reaches Delhi

All the documents including the views expressed by State Legislature on the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill-2013 reached the national capital on Monday.

The Bill, which was referred to the State Legislature by President Pranab Mukherjee for its views on the proposed bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh under Article 3, was returned along with the translated copies of the statements given by MLAs and MLCs in the House besides the amendments sought by the legislators. According to sources, an eight-member team of officials from the State's General Administration Department took the copies in 60 bundles by a special aircraft to New Delhi to hand over the same to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. The documents handed over to the MHA include the resolutions passed in both the House rejecting the Bill, sources said.

As many as 86 MLAs spoke on the bill and 9,072 amendments were sought by other members. The MHA had sought 50 copies of all documents which were prepared by the Assembly Secretariat and were handed over to Chief Secretary Dr PK Mohanty.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) on Telangana is likely to go through the views expressed by the State Legislature during its meeting to be held on Tuesday. Based on GoM's recommendations, the Union Cabinet would finalise the final draft which would be sent to the President for forwarding the same to the Parliament.

The President had referred the Telangana Bill to the State Legislature on December 12 while setting January 23 as the deadline to give its views. The Bill was tabled in both the houses on December 16 and following the extension of deadline by one week, the debate concluded on January 30.