Kiran Reddy resigns as Andhra CM

Says Telugu people have been divided by all parties

Ending the suspense over the impending closure of his tenure in government, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy submitted his resignation letter to Governor E S L Narasimhan on Wednesday.

He also announced his resignation from the legislative assembly and from the Congress “in protest against the manner” in which the Centre had got the AP Reorganisation Bill passed.

Reddy was accompanied by a dozen Members of Legislative Assembly, seven ministers and five Members of Legislative Council at the time of announcing his decision at a crowded media conference and later, when he went to Raj Bhavan to submit the resignation letter.

 

“I would be requesting the governor to find an alternative (to me) as quickly as possible,” he said before leaving for Raj Bhavan.

“...I am disillusioned with the disrespect the Union government and Lok Sabha have shown to the state, its legislature and the people by suspending public representatives from Andhra Pradesh and not providing an opportunity to any of them to express their views. The manner in which the Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha reflects the new depths to which our parliamentary institutions have sunk in,” Reddy said in his resignation letter.

The governor accepted his resignation and also asked Reddy to continue as a caretaker till alternate arrangements were in place, according to official sources. It was not clear if any member from the present Cabinet would be asked to head the government during the intervening period till the notification of the state bifurcation is issued by the President or simply impose governor’s rule.
 
Reddy  accused both the Congress party and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of entering an unholy understanding to hurt the interests and the feelings of Telugu people through the state bifurcation.

 

"I am not quitting simply because the Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha. I am registering my protest through the resignation because they had seriously hurt the feelings of my people. And also because they made a mockery of democracy in the name of passage of the Bill," Kiran Reddy said in an apparent reference to the leadership of the party and the government.
 
However, he refused to disclose his next political plan by saying that he would have continued in the Congress party had he given any importance to his political future.
 
Reddy admitted that he continued as chief minister at the behest of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. "I submitted my resignation soon after the Congress Working Committee (CWC) decided to bifurcate the state, but she turned down my request," he said.
 
A couple of ministers and MLAs who have accompanied the chief minister to Raj Bhavan, however, said they have no intention of leaving the Congress party.

 

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