Seemandhra Ministers, MLAs, MLCs stage 3-hour dharna

Hyderabad: About 74 Seemandhra legislators including 16 ministes, 44 MLAs and 14 MLCs wearing Gandhi caps staged dharna near Gate No 14 in the Assembly premises for about three hours on Tuesday demanding that the Centre roll back its decision to bifurcate the state.

Talking to media, minister S Sailajanath said that this was just a beginning and they would further intensify their agitation and put pressure on the party high command to take back its decision to divide the state. The Seemandhra leaders, he said, passed three resolutions saying that nothing short of Samaikyandhra was acceptable to them, extending support and expressing solidarity with the APNGOs and opposing the decision of the CWC decision on Telangana.

The minister said after Ganesh Chaturthi, the Seemandhra leaders would stage a 48- hour dharna in Hyderabad. He said in the next two or three days they would go to Delhi and meet the leaders of high command to explain their case. Ministers Erasu Pratap Reddy and Galla Aruna Kumari said that they were ready to quit the jobs anytime.

They said if they resigned now, they would be losing an opportunity to oppose the resolution in the State Assembly. The two ministers felt that even if the high command decided to take the process forward, it would take about 4-5months for the creation of Telangana. Hence they were making all-out efforts to ensure that the issue was put on hold. They claimed that the high command had recognised the intensity of the ongoing agitation in the region and hence was not in a position to either move backward or forward.

As the dharna of the Seemandhra leaders coincided with the visit of Bhutan Prime Minister Lyonchhen T Shering to Jubilee Hall with Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, there was heavy deployment of police personnel in and around the Assembly premises.

Prominent among those who participated in the dharna were ministers S Shailajanath, Ganta Srinivas Rao, Galla Aruna Kumari, Satrucharla Vijayaramaraju, Maheedhar Reddy, Pithani Satyanarayana, Kanna Laxminarayana, Syed Mohd Ahmadullah, Vatti Vasant Kumar, Kondru Murali Mohan, N Raghuveera Reddy, Kasu Venkata Krishna Reddy and Anam Ramnarayana Reddy.

Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana, ministers Dokka Manikhya Varaprasada Rao, Pithani Satyanarayana, G Parthasarthy and T G Venkatesh, MLAs Dharmana Prasada Rao and J C Diwakar Reddy were among those who did not participate in the dharna.