The ruling Congress MPs, legislators and state ministers from Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh on Friday said they would resign en masse on July 4 in support of their demand for a separate state. This decision was taken on Friday after a meeting of the leaders from the region attended by seven MPs, 18 MLAs, nine MLCs and nine ministers in Hyderabad.
The Congress, which has 156 MLAs in the house of 294, is likely to collapse once the 58 MLAs will quit n Monday. The leaders announced that they had no option but to take this drastic step as they were fed up of waiting for the Union government to act on the issue. "Meetings with the high command and also Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh have not yielded any results and hence we are taking this step," they announced.
Further they also said they were under pressure from voters, who have been demanding that they resign if the Congress was not working towards awarding statehood to Telangana. "The people of Telangana are expecting us to quit our posts for achieving separate statehood. Due to the delay in the formation of Telangana, there is an impression that we are not quitting our posts out of lust for power," Andhra Pradesh Panchayat Raj Minister K Jana Reddy said.
"Now we are in a situation that we have to prove that we are not hankering for power. Hence we decided to submit our resignations on July 4," he added.
The decision by Telangana Congress leaders has taken the high command in New Delhi by surprise and they are contemplating measures to wriggle out of the mess. Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said in New Delhi that
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