Telangana government which received brick bats from Hyderabad High court over the appointment of Parliamentary Secretaries, is now mulling on a way to bypass the high court order and reappoint them. This comes two days after the government confirmed to the court they will abide by the court’s order and cancel the appointment.
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Six TRS MLAs — D Vinaya Bhaskar, Jalagam Venkat Rao, V Srinivas Goud, G Kishore Kumar, V Satish Kumar and Kova Laxmi — were appointed as parliamentary secretaries under section 3 of the Telangana Parliamentary Secretaries. They were given the rank of state ministers. This was an indirect way to satisfy more MLAs with cabinet rank as Article 164(1A) of the Constitution only allows a maximum of 15% members from the state legislature can be appointed as ministers, including the chief minister.
Telangana government will issue the reappointment notification under the name of the Chief Minister instead of the governor. Parliamentary Secretaries enjoy all the benefits of a minister but do not take oath deal with files, issue GOs, enjoy administrative powers such as appointment and transfer of officers and do not even attend cabinet meetings. We will have to see how high court sees this new move of the KCR government.
