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AP opposition calls it a red letter day

Shireen in Hyderabad

The opposition parties termed the election of K Pratibha Bharathi as the first woman Speaker a "red-letter day" in the annals of the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly.

Paying her rich compliments on her elevation to the coveted post, Congress Legislature Party leader Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy said that it was the Congress which created history in the country by electing Sucheta Kripalani as the first woman chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Nagaratnamma as the first woman Speaker of a legislative assembly -- in Karnataka.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's floor leader N Indrasena Reddy assured all cooperation from his party members in the smooth conduct of the assembly proceedings. He said that the BJP government at the Centre was focussing on many women-related issues. It had tried to enact the Women Reservation Bill in the previous Lok Sabha. The Vajpayee government will table the Bill in the winter session of the new Lok Sabha.

Majlis-e-Ittehaadul Muslimeen floor leader Asaduddin Owaisi termed Bharati's unanimous election as a historic occasion and suggested to the chief minister to follow the parliamentary convention of offering the deputy speaker's post to the largest opposition party in the assembly -- the Congress.

Since the TDP had extended support to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, the BJP allotted the Lok Sabha Speaker's post to the TDP. As per convention, the BJP offered the deputy speaker's post to the Congress as the largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha. "You will be establishing a good convention in the state if you give away the deputy speaker's post to the opposition," Asaduddin Owaisi pleaded with the chief minister. "Your chair is not one of roses. But it will be our endeavour to ensure that it does not become a chair of thorns," he told the new Speaker.

Communist Party of India-Marxist floor leader Nomula Narasimhaiah said that though the state assembly elected its first woman Speaker who also happened to be a dalit, the state faced several problems. The CPI-M, he said, had launched a campaign for ensuring equal rights and opportunities to women. The party was fighting caste discrimination and it was also highlighting the atrocities being committed against women in the state.

Most of the woman legislators who felicitated Pratibha Bharati said this was an honour done to women in the state. They said that the 11th assembly, which created a record with the election of 27 women members, also set another record by electing the state's first woman and dalit Speaker.

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