Employees from Rayalseema, coastal Andhra to go on strike

Even as efforts to stall the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill were afoot in  New Delhi, government employees in the Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra regions of Andhra Pradesh will go on an indefinite strike from Wednesday midnight to oppose the Centre's efforts to table the bill in Parliament.

The employees, who had gone on strike for nearly two months last year to protest against the Centre's decision to bifurcate the state, announced a strike plan to coincide with the Parliament session beginning this week. 

Ashok Babu, president of the Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Officers' (APNGOs) Association, said the strike notice had been served on Secretary GAD on Tuesday. Employees will stage sit-ins at the residences of Central ministers and MPs and at the government offices in Seemandhra on February 7 and 8. The APNGOs have also called for a three-day shutdown in Seemandhra on 10, 11 and 12. 

In an effort to mount pressure on the Centre and stop the tabling of the Telangana Bill in parliament, the APNGOs have also called for “Chalo Delhi” on February 17, 18 and 19.However, the Seemandhra APSRTC unions said they would not be participating in the agitation as strike would once again force passengers to private buses.

In Seemandhra’s Guntur town, Congress MP Rayapati Sambashiva Rao said that Seemandhra MPs would serve a no-confidence motion on the Centre on Wednesday. 

Sambashiva Rao said the Seemandhra leaders, along with Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, would meet President Pranab Mukharjee and urge him not to clear the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill. Citing the change in its stand on the bifurcation of the State, he hoped that the draft Telangana Bill would not come to Parliament.

YSR Congress chief and Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who could not attend the BAC meeting in Delhi on Tuesday, said in his letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker that the bill should not be tabled in Parliament after its rejection by the State Assembly which passed a resolution to that effect.