Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy
About 80 legislators from the Seemandhra region of Andhra Pradesh, including ministers, have written to President Pranab Mukherjee asking him to grant three more weeks to the Andhra Pradesh legislature to complete the discussions on a bill to create Telangana.
It's not clear whether the President will oblige them again, but the move by the Seemandhra legislators is clearly aimed at putting fresh hurdles before the Centre in its plans to get the statehood bill passed in Parliament in the session that begins on February 5, the last before the national election, due by May.
The deadline for the state legislature to approve the statehood bill ends on January 30. But only 80 legislators have expressed their views so far, and another 200 are waiting in the queue. The state assembly and the legislative council together have to consider a whopping 9024 amendments, which was cited by the legislators seeking another extension in the deadline.
The state legislature had initially been granted time till January 23 to wind up the deliberations on the Andhra Pradesh (Reorganisation) Bill, and return it to the President. The Congress government led by Kiran Kumar Reddy, however, expressed its inability to meet the original deadline, and sought a four week's extension to send the legislation back to the Centre. The President remained unimpressed with the state government's arguments, and gave only a week's extra time to decide the bill's fate.
A defiant Mr Reddy, determined to stall any forward movement on the bill, added a new twist to the Telangana logjam on January 25 by moving a resolution calling upon the assembly speaker to seek a rejection of the draft Telangana bill on the ground that it had failed to specify any basis for recommending the state's bifurcation. The move has paralysed proceedings in the state assembly in the last two days.