Congress MLAs from Telangana too started raising their voice for statehood to their region, following TJAC’s call to target Congress leaders and the growing incidents of verbal attack against the ruling party lawmakers by Telangana activists in protest against the Congress delaying decision on the T-issue.
Exactly 10 days after the ‘resignation’ of seven Telangana Congress MPs, 10 party MLAs from the region, on Friday, announced that they too would quit if the Centre once again postpones the announcement of Telangana state.
The MLAs met at the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) office here.
Government chief whip Gandra Venkataramana Reddy, whip E Anil Kumar and MLAs K Sridhar, B Bikshmaiah Goud, A Maheswar Reddy, VM Abraham, Ch Muthym Reddy, T Nandishwar Goud, T Narsa Reddy and P Kista Reddy took part in the meeting.
Soon after the meeting, talking to reporters, the legislators exuded confidence that their high command would not go back on its promise of according statehood to Telangana.
Gandra Venkataramana Reddy said they had decided to hold a meeting with ministers, MLCs and MPs from the region before the commencement of the budget session of Parliament to formulate an action plan to step up pressure on the party high command.
“A broad-based meeting is being planned,” he said.
The chief whip said all the people’s representatives of the Congress from Telangana were planning to write to AICC chief Sonia Gandhi urging her to take an early decision on Telangana.
Contradicting the claim of chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy that the cooperative elections reflected the ground reality, the chief whip said, “Cooperative polls do not reflect the aspirations of the people.
T people still believe that the Congress will accord statehood to their region. So, they backed the ruling parties candidates in these polls,” he said.
“We are ready for any sacrifice for the sake of T-state. We appeal to youngsters not to take their lives,” he said.
Meanwhile, as most of these MLAs are close to the CM and always adopted a moderate approach towards T demand, T activists are skeptical about their commitment