Congress rule in AP threatened

The stability of the Congress government in the state was threatened on Tuesday with two dozen party legislators attending YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s ‘Jal Deeksha’ in the national capital and the party leaders from Telangana declaring that they would not hesitate to quit their posts if the region was not carved out into a separate state.

Ignoring the party diktat and despite concerted efforts by chief minister, N Kiran Kumar Reddy, to keep the flock together, as many as 24 Congress legislators and two MPs took part in Jagan’s dharna in Delhi.

On the other hand, nine party MPs, six legislators and two ministers from Telangana held a meeting here and vowed to continue their struggle for the statehood cause.

The ruling Congress in the state has 155 MLAs in the 294-member Assembly, just eight more than the half-way mark.

Rattled by the developments, a worried Congress leadership deputed Union Law Minister, Veerappa Moily, to the state capital in a bid to rein in the Telangana protagonists. Moily held detailed discussions with the chief minister.

The party high command has summoned the MPs from Telangana to Delhi tomorrow for a meeting with Union Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

Meanwhile, buoyed by the participation of a large number of MLAs, Jagan, who is set to float his own political party, raised his pitch and declared, “if my MLAs decide to resign, the government will collapse.” He, however, reiterated that he had no intentions to dislodge the government.