AP: TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao resigns

Telangana Rasthra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao on Tuesday resigned from the party post owning moral responsibility for its drubbing in the just-concluded byelections.

KCR, as the Telangana party chief is known in political circles, sent his resignation letter to the party general secretary T Madhusudanachary.

"He has asked the party executive committee to accept his resignation," TRS sources said.

However, his resignation is unlikely to be accepted by the party. KCR's move came in the backdrop of the TRS' poor showing in the May 29 bypolls, which were caused by the en masse resignation of its MPs and MLAs in protest against the United Progressive Alliance government's failure to grant statehood for Telangana.

The party managed to retain only seven out of 16 assembly and two out of four Lok Sabha seats it had vacated.

The ruling Congress and the main opposition Telugu Desam Party wrested the remaining seats in an election that was widely seen as a referendum on the Telangana statehood issue.

The TRS, which went to the polls with a single point agenda of Telangana and hoped to capitalise on the statehood sentiment, failed to impress voters.

So humiliating was the verdict that TRS lost Warangal Lok Sabha seat, considered the nerve centre of the Telangana movement, to TDP, while its floor leader in the assembly Vijayarama Rao was also defeated in Station Ghanpur constituency in the district.

Adding insult to the injury, the victory margin of KCR in Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat was reduced to 15,000 votes, a steep fall compared to over 2 lakh votes he had got in the 2006 elections.