KCR, Vijayashanti not to resign now

Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrasekhar Rao dropped hints that he and his party MP Vijayashanti might not resign their membership of Parliament immediately in order to avoid simultaneous elections to their seats along with twelve Assembly constituencies where sitting MLAs have recently quit.

In an informal chat with reporters, Mr. Rao said he had his own strategy on vacating the seats of TRS in Parliament. Now that twelve MLAs have resigned, Mr. Rao said the Election Commission will notify polls to them. He would wait until they were over and he and Vijayashanti could quit later. “The idea is to keep the ball rolling,” he remarked to convey the point that the TRS aimed to keep up the pressure of separate Telangana on the Centre.

Asked if he would not attend the budget session of Parliament, Mr. Rao said it did not matter to him as the issue of Telangana was the be all and end all for him.

Earlier, he said there was no way the MLAs of Telangana could get away without resigning to mount pressure on the Centre. They will all have to resign as people will not tolerate if they did not quit. In any case, the Telangana Joint Action Committee (JAC) will take a view on Tuesday on what was to be done to make them resign, Mr. Rao said, replying to a question at a press conference on Monday.

Complimenting the large number of lawyers from Telangana who tried to surge towards Parliament House in New Delhi defying the police, Mr. Rao said it could have been avoided if a Union Minister was deputed to talk to them before the procession began from Jantar Mantar. It was unfortunate that not even Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, a lawyer himself in the Supreme Court, met them.

One of the participants, Srinivas Reddy, suffered a heart attack after the police used water cannons to disperse the crowd. He was admitted to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi where his colleagues were taking care of him.

Another blow

Mr. Rao said the recent merchant power policy of the State government was another blow to Telangana as it deprived the AP Genco plant at Nedunur in Karimnagar district access to natural gas from KG basin though the pipeline passed close by. The plant would have to process liquefied gas to meet its fuel needs which resulted in escalation of generation cost from Rs. 7 to Rs. 9 a unit. However, the government extended to the private sector belonging to coastal districts natural gas for its power utilities to limit generation cost to just Rs. 3 a unit.