Congress' Andhra Pradesh President Y. S. Sharmila, on Friday said that if YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) leader and former Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and his party MLAs have no courage to attend the Assembly, they should resign from it.
Be it Jagan Mohan Reddy or YSRCP MLAs, if they have no courage to go to Assembly, they should resign, she said in her reaction to the decision by the YSRCP to boycott the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Budget session scheduled to start on November 11.
Talking to mediapersons on the sidelines of a programme at Machilipatnam, Sharmila, sister of Jagan Mohan Reddy, wondered why she and her brother should hold positions if there is no courage to attend the Assembly session.
The NDA would have absolutely no opposition in the House, given the decision of the YSRCP's, the single opposition party, with 11 members in the 175-member Assembly, to boycott the session.
The NDA is headed by the Telugu Desam Party of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. The other constituents of the ruling coalition are Jana Sena of Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The YSRCP, whose leader is Jagan Mohan Reddy, has decided not to attend the session of the Assembly because it is not considered as the main opposition. Former Chief Minister said on Thursday that attending the Assembly session is of little use as the ruling coalition had a plan to suppress the voice of Opposition.
The coalition government doesn't like the Opposition discussing public issues. Therefore, it is not prepared to recognize YSRCP as the opposition party and its leader as the Leader of the Opposition, he said in a news conference.
The YSRCP MLAs would get merely two minutes each while nothing was to be provided to Jagan Mohan Reddy in the absence of his Leader of the Opposition status to discuss public issues. "When they are not prepared to recognize us as the main opposition to deny mikes, what is the point in going to the Assembly? He will use the time available to him as leader of opposition in being the voice of the people through the media," he said.
