Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh Assembly has started wearing a fresh green look, after the colour of the entire seating arrangement in the House has been changed,
with a view to symbolise the common people and farmers.
Earlier, the colour of the seating arrangement was
light maroon.
"Green represents the common people and the farmers in
British parliamentary tradition. The British House of Commons
(the elected House) is green and we are following that,"
Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar, who recently visited
Britain and other European parliaments as a member of the
Commonwealth Speakers` delegation, has said.
After Lok Sabha, AP Assembly becomes the first
Legislature in the country to go green.
Besides the seating colour, a whole lot of changes
have been made in the House for the comfort of members and a
new audio system has also been installed as part of the
refurbishment exercise.
"The facilities in the House have outlived their
utility, as they remained the same in the last 27 years since
the new Assembly building was inaugurated in 1985. The seating
design has been changed to give more comfort, while the
internal lighting and audio system have been totally re-done,"
the Speaker explained on the eve of the Budget session
beginning Monday.
By the next monsoon session, the Assembly would go
paperless with the installation of touch-screen devises for
each member.
All the Assembly business would be transacted with the
help of the touch-screen monitors, doing away with the papers.
"The desks have been kept ready for this, but because
of paucity of time, we could not do it for the Budget
session," Manohar added.
The inner and the outer lobbies of the Assembly have
also been re-modelled giving a new "decent" look.
High-security cameras would be installed at the main
entrance gates of the Assembly building where the registration
number of each vehicle and the name of the legislator would be
captured with the help of radio-frequency identification card.
More than two dozen surveillance cameras have already
been installed as part of the enhanced security measures.
A sum of Rs 3.17 crore has been spent so far on the
renovation works.
PTI
