There are absolutely no chances of increasing the number of Assembly seats in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh States now, if one were to go by the statement of former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh, who was instrumental in the bifurcation of the erstwhile AP.
Though Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs M Venkaiah Naidu has been saying the Constitutional amendment bill seeking to amend the AP Reorganisation Act to enable increase in the number of assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to 225 and 153 respectively would be introduced in the next Parliament session, Jairam Ramesh said the amendment was not possible.
According to him, the Parliament itself had passed an act freezing the existing number of Assembly and Parliament seats till 2026 as per Article 170 of the Constitution and there was no way it could be changed again.
Even in the past, there was an attempt to increase the number of seats in Jharkhand, but it could not be implemented because of this freezing. So, there is no possibility of increasing the number of Assembly seats in Telangana and AP till 2026, he said.
If that is the case, why the hell the clause in APRA was introduced seeking to increase the number of MLA seats in Telugu States? The drafting of the APRA was personally supervised by Jairam himself.
So, why did he introduce the clause knowing fully well that the MLA seats cannot be increased till 2026?
