Telangana: Cong MLAs obey Moily, cancel Delhi trip

Even as legislators of the Telugu Desam Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti hailing from Telangana region decided to go ahead with their resignations in support of a separate state on Friday, the Congress group from the region softened its stand and on Tuesday aborted its visit to New Delhi to pressurise the party high command.

Senior leaders of the group K Jana Reddy and R Damodar Reddy, who had already reached Delhi in advance, returned to Hyderabad on Tuesday saying that central government was expected to make a favorable announcement on Telangana soon and hence the visit was not necessary.

The visit to Delhi was scrapped after the Law Minister Veerappa Moily and All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Andhra Pradesh affairs made a hard-hitting remark against the Congress legislators' visit and their proposal to resign.

Assuring that the Centre would make a statement soon, Moily said the visits and counter visits by groups of Congress leaders from Telangana and Rayalaseema regions were only adding to the existing complications.

He requested the Telangana leaders not to come to Delhi and to give time to the Centre to take a decision.

Moily also rebuffed the legislators' threat to resign from the AP assembly.

"At the most the assembly will be dissolved, but this will further delay a decision on Telangana. Even if a bill for formation of Telangana state is introduced in parliament, it has to be sent to the assembly for consultation," he had said.

Congress legislators and Members of Parliamant from Telangana had decided to go to Delhi to meet the party's leadership to push for a favorable decision on Telangana before January 28, the deadline fixed by the all-party Telangana Joint Action Committee.

The TJAC had threatened that if the statement were not declared by January 28, the MLAs of Telangana region would force the Andhra Pradesh speaker to accept their resignations to create a constitutional crisis in the state.

Congress MLA from Telangana G Vivek said the Centre had already made up its mind on Telangana and would bring a bill in the Parliament's next session for the formation of Telangana state.

"The party is also going to issue a whip asking all its MPs to support the bill," he said in New Delhi.  

The move to cancel the trip is being seen as softening of stand by the Telangana Congress group, and is not likely to join the other parties in forcing the state Speaker N Kirankumar Reddy to accept their resignations on January 29.

Senior TRS leader T Harish Rao said the Congress group's decision made no difference to them.

"We will meet the speaker and urge him to accept our resignations (on January 29). If he declines, we will sit on dharna in the assembly itself and will continue till our resignations are accepted", he said.

R Prakash Reddy, a legislator of the TDP said there was no question of going back on resignations and all the 39 TDP MLAs from Telangana would submit their resignations on January 29.

"The JAC had set the deadline of January 28 for submitting the resignations in consultation with all the parties," he said.

Reddy said the Telangana leaders of the TDP were ready to even quit the party for the sake of a separate state.

While all the 39 Members of Legislative Assembly of the TDP and 10 of the TRS and two of the Praja Rajyam Party have already submitted their resignations to the speaker, only 21 of the 52 Congress MLAs have chosen to do so.