As many as nine Lok Sabha members from Telangana Rashtra Samithi on Wednesday served a notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking to move a privilege motion against Union minister of state for tribal welfare Bishweshwar Tudu for misleading the House on tribal reservations.
In their notice, the TRS members said they were moving the privilege motion under rule 222 against the Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs for misleading the House in his answer to the question raised on 21.03.2022 pertaining to Telangana's proposal for increasing the quantum of the reservation to ST groups.
In his answer to the said question (enclosed herewith), the Minister denied that there was any proposal by Telangana on the issues of reservations to STs.
The Telangana Government, not only made proposals for increase of reservations but passed a Bill No-6 of 2017 (sec 4(2)) increasing the reservations to STS from 6.8% to 10% and sent it to Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs in fact gave its consent through letter dated December 18, 2017 on the issue of increase of reservations to STs.
“This tantamounts to breach of "privilege" of the Members,” the MPs said.
The TRS has already demanded that the Union minister be sacked from the post for his blatant lies in the Parliament.
The TRS also called the party cadres and the tribals to organise funeral processions of the BJP effigies in all tribal hamlets and universities in the State as a mark of protest.
Replying to a question raised by Congress MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy in the Lok Sabha on Monday, union Minister Bishweshwar Tudu said that the Tribal Affairs Ministry has not received any proposal from the Telangana government seeking an increase for the reservation of Scheduled Tribes to 12 per cent.
Condemning the statement made by the union Minister in the Parliament, Finance Minister T Harish Rao said the former had insulted the tribals by denying the fact that the State government did not send any proposals for increasing the ST reservations.
“The Telangana State Assembly has passed an unanimous resolution to increase the ST reservations and sent it to the union government. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had written twice to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Tribal Welfare Minister Satyavathi Rathod and the officials wrote numerous letters to the Centre in this regard. Rather than approving it, the union Minister had spelled out blatant lies misleading the House as well as tribals in the State,” he said.
