Differences crop up among ministers

Higher Education Minister D Sridhar Babu and Information Technology Minister Komatireddy Venkata Reddy have decided not to follow in the footsteps of their 11 colleagues as they felt there has been “no concrete outcome” on the statehood issue, party sources said.

The other ministers, however, denied knowledge about any such development and state PCC president D Srinivas claimed that all the 13 ministers from the region have withdrawn their resignation.

Thirteen ministers hailing from the Telangana region had resigned after Home Minister P Chidambaram’s statement on December 23, putting the Telangana issue on the backburner. They demanded immediate steps for creation of a separate Telangana.

Unanimous decision

“In the morning, when we all met at the residence of PCC chief D Srinivas, we had decided to withdraw our resignation as the Centre began the process of creating a separate Telangana state by convening an all-party meeting on January 5.

“But we are not aware of the two ministers’ fresh decision,” Ministers J Geeta Reddy, Jupalli Krishna Rao, R Venkata Reddy, Ponnala Lakshmaiah and D K Aruna told reporters at the Secretariat after meeting Chief Minister K Rosaiah.

“We are writing a letter to AICC Chief Sonia Gandhi informing her about our decision to take back our resignations as we have sent our common resignation letter to her earlier,” the ministers said.