Andhra ministers quit, bandh off

All 13 Congress ministers from Telangana resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Friday, sending a common resignation letter by fax to party president Sonia Gandhi even as Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said, “The Union government has not diluted its stand on Telangana.” HT Correspondents reports.

All 13 Congress ministers from Telangana resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Friday, sending a common resignation letter by fax to party president Sonia Gandhi even as Union Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said, “The Union government has not diluted its stand on Telangana.”

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The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS)-led Telangana joint action committee has meanwhile suspended its bandh till December 28.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which said it disapproved of TRS chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s alleged highhandedness, formed a separate forum to raise the demand for Telangana’s statehood.

TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu accused the TRS of being responsible for Thursday’s attack on senior TDP leader Nagam Janardhana Reddy on the Osmania University campus, and warned that his party would not take it lying down.

“The attack was part of a TRS conspiracy against the TDP and its leaders,” Naidu said. “TRS has been decimated in the region and therefore hatched a plan to insult TDP and its leaders over the Telangana statehood issue.”

Students of Osmania University, however, met Reddy and apologised.

Despite Moily’s statement reassuring Telangana agitators, pro-Telangana groups want similar assurances from other Congress leaders. “We want it to come either from Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee or Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel,’’ said a senior Telangana leader, who did not want to be named.

At a meeting of the joint action committee, Chandrasekhar Rao is understood to have mooted a proposal to fix a deadline for the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

The closed-door meeting of leaders belonging to the TRS and other groups decided to continue the movement peacefully, TRS sources said.

“There is no bandh tomorrow,” said Congress MLA R. Damodar Reddy. “We appeal to the people to hold peaceful protests as they deem fit.”