Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao have been at loggerheads since last year, when the Governor refused to accept the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government’s MLC nomination of Padi Kaushik. The Governor had subsequently alleged that the government was repeatedly insulting her office, by denying her respect as per protocol.
The crisis deepened recently after the Chief Minister, popularly known as KCR, did not participate in the Republic Day celebrations, and also skipped the ‘At Home’ event hosted by the Governor. Taking offence, the latter went on to slam KCR in her speech on the Republic Day, later even appearing in TV debates accusing him of violating the Constitution by refusing to participate in the celebrations.
The cold war between the two parties finally reached the Telangana High Court on Monday, January 30, after the Governor refused to give consent to the state’s Budget 2023-24, which was sent over to her office on January 21. The proposed budget session was scheduled to begin on February 3, which eventually led to the government moving a lunch motion petition against the Governor. The petition, however, was withdrawn later in the day, after both the councils decided to resolve the issue amicably as suggested by the Telangana High Court.
The petition was heard post lunch at 2.30 pm. Representing the Telangana government, Dushyant Dave told the court that the Governor did not have discretionary powers regarding the state budget.
However, Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan sought to know if the High Court had authority to review the actions of the Governor. News agency IANS reported that during the hearing, the division bench asked the Advocate General how the court could give notice to the Governor, and also wanted to know why the court is being dragged into a controversy between the government and a constitutional institution.
On the court’s suggestion, the state government’s lawyer Dushyant Dave and Raj Bhavan’s lawyer Ashok Anand held talks.
“The court had asked both the state government and the Governor to come to a consensus and resolve the issue amicably. The court said that they cannot intervene in the issue since the Governor is a high constitutional functionary. After lunch, both the councils had a discussion and the government said that they would include the Governor’s address in the Budget speech, while the Governor’s office assured that they will give the consent for the Budget,” a lawyer told the media. Following this, the court did not entertain the petition.
Earlier on Sunday, during the BRS parliamentary meeting, KCR had directed the party’s nine Lok Sabha and seven Rajya Sabha MPs to raise the issue in the Parliament that the Union government was troubling non-BJP state governments by misusing the Governors’ system.