Decks have been cleared for amending the section 23(1) of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, to increase the number of seats in Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council from 50 to 58 according to the provisions of the Constitution.

Though the expected amendment to the Act was not taken up in the just concluded session of the Parliament, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval for amending the section to rectify the anomaly in allocating the number of seats in the Legislative Council. The Centre may issue an ordinance to this effect.

According to the Constitution, the strength of Legislative Council can be one third of the strength of Legislative Assembly. Since the existing strength of Assembly is 175, its strength can be 58 MLCs -- 20 each under local authorities, MLAs’ quota, five each from graduates and teachers constituencies and eight under Governor’s nomination quota.

However the State Re-organisation Act distributed the 90 seats in the Council of combined State and allotted 50 seats to residuary A.P. and 40 to Telangana State under the above five categories.

Besides, the schedule 3 of the Act allotted 20 seats each under Local authorities and MLAs’ quota to successor A.P. State while the section 23 of the Act mentioned it as 17 each. This necessitated the amendment to section 23 for rectification of the anomaly.

The Election Commission noticed the above anomalies in the Act and had sent a proposal to the Union Government to carry out the correction months ago, sources said.

There will be no change in the strength of Telangana Council (40 members) as it is about one-third of its existing Assembly strength. However there is a need to increase the members from local authorities from 11 to 14 by delimitation of the constituencies to touch the 40 member mark, sources added. Its present strength is 37.

Source: TH