Hyderabad:
Under pressure from the people to force a rethink on a new Telangana state, Congress leaders from the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions will gather today in Delhi and in Hyderabad, to discuss whether more of them should resign. Six Andhra Pradesh ministers and six other legislators had put in their papers yesterday.
This morning, protesting students picketed the home of state minister Ganta Srinivas in Vishakhapatnam, demanding that he should resign. Similar incidents and protests have been reported in Tirupati and Vizianagram.
MPs who want a "united Andhra Pradesh" will meet in Delhi; the Congress MP from Guntur has already said he will quit. In Hyderabad, nearly 40 Congressmen, including 13 ministers and 20 MLAs, are meeting at Ministers' Quarters. They will then head out to talk to Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy. More resignations could be announced thereafter.
The Congress government in the state is functioning on depleted strength already in the 294-member Assembly and can ill-afford those resignations. It has 149 seats, two more than the halfway mark. There are 16 vacancies, caused by the disqualification of 15 rebels, nine of them Congressmen, loyal to Jagan Reddy's YSR Congress and the death of one MLA.
The ruling party's efforts to make up for some lost numbers by convincing the Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS to merge with it have also not seen success yet. After the Telangana announcement, the TRS, which has spearheaded the movement for a separate state in recent years, has brushed away for later all talk on merging with the Congress. It has meanwhile suspended its MP rom Medak, actress Vijayashanti for allegedly trying to join the Congress. The party has 17 seats in the Assembly.
Kiran Kumar Reddy is in a spot, but has clear instructions from his party leadership that there will be no going back on the Telangana decision this time. He said as much to upset Congressmen who met him yesterday.
A message that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had also firmly handed to a group of these leaders who met her hours before the party's working committee announced the decision on Monday. She also reportedly instructed them to convince the people of Andhra Pradesh that a split would benefit them.