Telangana crisis pauses life in Andhra

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New Delhi: The crisis in Andhra Pradesh has escalated and the ripples are being felt at the Centre as well with the Congress scrambling for cover.

TRS Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao - one of the prime crusaders of the Telangana movement - and Vijayshanthi faxed their resignations to Speaker Meira Kumar on Tuesday.

Sources have told CNN-IBN that Rao is expected to meet the speaker either on Tuesday or Wednesday.

TDP MPs Nageswara Rao and Ramesh Rathod will also be submitting their resignation to the Speaker shortly after they reach Parliament.

Telanagana turmoil

Stepping up the demand for a separate state, the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti has called for a 48-hour bandh starting Tuesday. The districts that will observe the bandh include Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Warangal, Mahbubnagar, Karimnagar and Nizamabad.

35 Congress MLAs and 37 TDP MLAs quit on Monday, leaving the state government worried about being reduced to a minority.

The Centre has written to the President to enable Hyderabadis to get priority in government jobs, but nothing less than statehood will be accepted say legislators.

Congress MLAs from Telangana trooping in to the state assembly to submit their resignations - the Speaker of the house is not in the country so they had to hand it over to the deputy Speaker. In all, 35 of the total 53 MLAs that the party has from the region have resigned. 11 of them are state ministers. But till the Speaker returns there's no clarity on whether indeed these resignations will be accepted or will it just remain a drama.

37 of the Telugu Desam party's MLAs too submitted their resignations and if all of it accepted it will be chaos in the state assembly.

Congress has 155 MLAs plus the 18 from Chiranjeevi's party who merged with the Congress. But 53 MLAs come from the Telangana region and around 35 of them have resigned.

In new Delhi, the party's Lok Sabha MPs from the region went to the Speaker - they were first given time at 11 AM but since they turned up late, they had to wait till 3 PM to submit their resignations. A total of 9 Lok Sabha MPs of the 12 from Telangana and 1 Rajya Sabha MP have put in their papers. But they do admit that if the centre gives them an assurance they will take it back.

The Centre realises that its Telenagana leadership has faced enormous pressure to resign from the grass roots and partys like K Chandrashekar Rao's TRS. But will it come up with a face saver announcement on the issue without which the crisis may get worse.

The TRS, meanwhile, has called for a bandh, protest march and even a rail roko over the next few days. And agitations will only intensify the situation for the Congress government in the state and the Centre. While the party's leaders are willing to the negotiate, the question is how long can the Centre remain silent on Telangana.

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