Amid the protest over the appointment of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Akbaruddin Owaisi as a pro-tem Speaker of the assembly, Telangana Minister and Congress leader Uttam Kumar Reddy on Saturday said that “It is a normal procedure and added that the Congress party did what was the right thing to do”.

“Going by seniority in Assembly, I should have been the pro-tem Speaker, the senior most MLA in the Congress party, but since I have taken an oath as a minister, the procedure didn’t allow me to be a pro-tem Speaker. So then we looked at other 6-term MLAs, the most senior MLAs. Akbaruddin Owaisi is the most senior MLA among all the parties. So it is a normal procedure,” he told ANI.

Further, Reddy defended the appointment of an All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) MLA as the pro-tem Speaker, stating it was a normal procedure followed even during the previous BRS government. He emphasised that the decision was made based on what was right, not due to any external factors.

“When the BRS government was there last time, they had an AIMIM MLA as the pro-tem Speaker. This has nothing to do with anything else. We did what was the right thing to do. I cannot comment on the future equation with AIMIM. That’s for our state leadership to discuss with everybody. And also for our national leadership to discuss and give us a direction,” Telangana Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy said.

Meanwhile, objecting to the appointment of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Akbaruddin Owaisi as a pro-tem Speaker of the assembly, Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party chief and Union minister G Kishan Reddy said on Saturday that the BJP decided to boycott the oath-taking event, alleging violation of assembly rules in the appointment of pro-tem Speaker.

G Kishan Reddy further said that the BJP will go to the Governor on the issue of the pro-tem Speaker.

“BJP is against the appointment of Akbaruddin Owaisi as Pro-tem Speaker (of Telangana Assembly). This is against the tradition of appointing senior MLAs to the post.The BJP MLAs will boycott taking oaths before this pro-tem Speaker,” he said.

“Our MLAs will take oaths after a speaker is appointed. We will never ally with such a party (AIMIM). We will go to the governor on this,” he added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party accused the Congress government of ‘neglecting’ the senior candidates for the post and of defying the existing tradition of the House.

Citing violation of assembly rules in the appointment of pro-tem Speaker, he said, “There is a tradition of appointing senior leaders as the pro-tem speakers. However, they (Congress) have appointed Akbaruddin Owaisi due to their understanding with AIMIM. We object to this.”

On Friday, AIMIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi took oath as pro-tem Speaker of the Telangana Legislative Assembly in Raj Bhawan, Hyderabad.

The oath was administered by Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan. Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy was also present on the occasion.

The governor appointed Akbaruddin Owaisi as the pro-tem speaker of the state assembly on Friday.

The first session of the third Telangana State Legislative Assembly began today.

The pro-tem speaker serves a temporary role, officiating the assembly session until the newly-elected members are sworn in and a speaker is elected.

Earlier on Thursday, twelve MLAs took oaths as ministers in a fresh cabinet in Telangana, along with new Chief Minister Anumula Revanth Reddy in Hyderabad. Revanth Reddy became the first Congress Chief Minister of the youngest state in India.

Congress won an absolute majority in Telangana for the first time, winning 64 of 119 seats.

Telangana Congress President Revanth Reddy won by a margin of 32,532 votes in Kodangal against BRS’s Patnam Narender Reddy.

Meanwhile, the Telangana BJP took to ‘X’ and criticised the new Congress government over the appointment of the AIMIM MLA as the pro-tem speaker.

“The Congress government in Telangana is like a nose that blows when it sneezes. That is why Telangana state BJP President and Union Minister @kishanreddybjp has expressed his opposition to the decision of the Congress to write off the tradition of the Legislative Assembly by assigning the post of Protem Speaker to Akbaruddin Owaisi to tame the Majlis Party and not the seniors in the Assembly”, said the party in a post on X.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Eight passengers, including a child, died after their car collided with a truck on the highway and caught fire late last night in Uttar Pradesh. The car, which was centrally locked, trapped the seven adults and a child to death in Bareilly, said police.

The burning car was spotted on the Nainital highway with the truck next to it, according to footage from the accident site. The doors of the car presumably got jammed after the accident and didn’t open.

The car had veered into the opposite lane and rammed a truck, said Sushil Chandra Bhan Dhule, Senior Superintendent of Police, Bareilly.

“The car collided with a truck on the highway near Bhojipura and got dragged, due to which it caught fire. It was centrally locked, hence the people inside lost their lives due to the fire,” said the official.

The passengers were on their way to attend a wedding, he said, adding that their bodies have been sent for post-mortem.

How the conspiracy to kill Rajput leader and Karni Sena chief Sukhdev Singh Gogamedi unfolded step by step has been detailed for the first time, according to police sources.

On CCTV, Gogamedi was with four men at his Jaipur home on December 5, when suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, two of the men got up from their chairs and shot him.

Sources have said the mastermind of the plot to kill the Rajput leader was Rajasthan gangster Rohit Godara, who is suspected to be living in Canada and closely associated with Goldie Brar and Lawrence Bishnoi’s gangs linked to last year’s murder of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala.

Godara assigned the task of killing Gogamedi and the responsibility of hiring a shooter to his lieutenant, Virendra Charan, sources said.

Charan and Godara met in a jail in Rajasthan’s Ajmer while serving time in a rape case.

Godara told investigators that Gogamedi had been instrumental in the filing of the rape case against him, for which he planned to take revenge, sources said.

Charan soon took advantage of Godara’s anger and prepared him to killed Gogamedi.

Charan got his second shooter, Nitin Fauji, in jail. Fauji wanted to settle abroad, and so he sought advice from Charan, who assured of help once the ‘job’ was done, sources said.

Both shooters then made the plan to kill Gogamedi and kept in touch with Charan immediately before and after the killing, sources said.

Charan sent the guns to both the shooters in Jaipur through his network. The two later buried the guns near a hotel in the city, sources said. Police are working to recover the guns.

During initial investigation, a property dispute angle between Godara and Gogimedi had come to light. The question of caste equation is also being investigated.

The Rajput leader’s sensational murder, caught on CCTV cameras, sparked massive protests in Rajasthan which is going through a regime change after the BJP wrested power from the ruling Congress government in the recently held assembly elections.

The BJP, which has come to power after the recently-concluded assembly election but is yet to swear in a Chief Minister in the state, sought a probe by the anti-terror group National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the murder.