Cong plays safe on second SRC

225 MLAs against Telangana resolution

“At the moment, the issue is Telangana and there is no need to expand it into the larger issue of other states, which is not a matter of automatic equivalence,” Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said on Sunday when asked if the party favoured setting up a second SRC.

In Andhra Pradesh, agitation and protests continued unabated as non-Telangana leaders cutting across party lines on Sunday stepped up pressure against a separate Telangana, but ministers from the region who had threatened to quit appeared to have a rethink on the issue.

In an apparent bid to scuttle the separate Telangana move, Vijayawada Congress MP L Rajagopal, who resigned his Lok Sabha seat, demanded in New Delhi that the resolution favouring bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh be moved in the Assembly where, he claimed, it will be opposed by 225 MLAs.

He also threatened to launch a hunger strike if the resolution is not moved. Rajagopal accused Telangana Rastra Samiti chief    K Chandrasekhara Rao of going back on his demand for a resolution in the Assembly since he now knew that it would be defeated.
Protest rallies and fasts continued in the coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions in support of a unified Andhra Pradesh. The anti-Telangana protesters held a series of relay and indefinite hunger strikes at several places in the two regions. However, there were no reports of any violence.

Telugu Desam Party legislators D Umamaheswara Rao  and Chinnam Ramakotaiah  along with former Vijayawada mayor Panchumarthi Anuradha and party leader B Umamaheswara Rao started an indefinite hunger strike in Vijayawada, the epicentre of anti-Telangana protests.

Two Praja Rajyam Party legislators, Y Srinivas and Y Ravi, met the TDP leaders, who are on fast in Vijayawada, and expressed their solidarity with them.
In New Delhi, Singhvi said: “Let us first deal with this (Telangana) and not go into other issues.” Singhvi’s statement comes in the backdrop of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement, making it clear that in future, the Centre would not like to accept demands for the creation of new states.