Telangana to have 17 Lok Sabha seats, 119 member assembly

Following the bifurcation of existing Andhra Pradesh state, the successor states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will have 17 and 25 Lok Sabha seats respectively.

Telangana, comprising 10 districts including Hyderabad, will have a 119 member assembly while Andhra Pradesh, comprising 13 districts, will have 175 member assembly.

The existing assembly has 294 members while one member from Anglo-Indian community is nominated by the governor.

The bill for formation of Telangana state, moved in Andhra Pradesh assembly Monday, proposes that the governor may nominate one member each to the assemblies of the successor states to give representation to the Anglo-Indian community.

The legislative council, the upper house of the state legislature, will continue in both the states. Out of 90 seats in the existing council, the central government has allotted 50 seats to Andhra Pradesh and 40 to Telangana.

The existing state sends 18 members to Rajya Sabha. The bill proposes that Telangana will get seven seats and Andhra Pradesh 11 but the distribution of sitting members which include union minister Jairam Ramesh has become a difficult task.

The process may throw an interesting situation where sitting members from one state will be deemed to have been elected from the other state.

Of the five sitting members whose term will expire next year, the Rajya Sabha chairman, through draw of lots, will determine two of them deemed to have been elected from Telangana and three from Andhra Pradesh.

From the six sitting members whose term will expire in 2016, two will be allotted to Telangana and four to Andhra Pradesh through draw of lots.

A similar procedure will be adopted to allot three sitting members each to the two states from the six members whose term is ending in 2018. The Rajya Sabha seat which fell vacant due to resignation of Nandamuri Harikrishna in August will be allotted to Andhra Pradesh.

The bill proposes that the Election Commission will take up delimitation of assembly constituencies to determine the number of seats to be reserved for the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes in the assemblies of the two states.

The delimitation exercise may also be taken up for the adjustments in the boundaries and description of the extent of the parliamentary constituencies in each state.