AP Assembly House turns green, gets a facelift

Hyderabad, Feb 12: 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