Manmohan urged to start Telangana process by Monday

HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to announce the commencement of the constitutional process for the formation of a Telangana State by Monday evening, failing which an indefinite bandh would be called from December 29. He served this ultimatum at a meeting of the newly formed Telangana Joint Action Committee (JAC) here, but its leaders felt that a holistic view, including the likely inconvenience to the public, should be taken.

Moreover, they should elicit the cooperation of the Telugu Desam Party, which refused to join the JAC after attending its maiden meeting on Thursday. JAC convener C. Kondaram told The Hindu that a final decision on the bandh would be taken in a day or two.

Talking to journalists, the TRS president demanded that Chief Minister K. Rosaiah step down as he had lost the moral right to continue after the resignation of Ministers from Telangana. He accused TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu of hatching a conspiracy to set up obstacles to the creation of Telangana and of misleading his own partymen by blaming the TRS for the attack on Nagam Janardhan Reddy, a senior MLA, on the Osmania University campus.

Congress MP Madhu Yaskhi, referring to The Hindu's editorial on Friday, "Way out in Andhra Pradesh," asked the JAC to engage the newspaper's editorial team in a dialogue over its content. He said the struggle for a separate Telangana was not over development or backwardness but it was one for self-respect. "Our region may be backward but not our thinking," he said.

Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao intervened to say that Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu N. Ram was his personal friend and regretted the JAC did not have a resource group to impress upon Editors and the media the merits of the agitation. He called for setting up a group of intellectuals to talk to Editors by Monday.

Meanwhile, in a fresh problem for the government, all 13 Ministers from Telangana announced their decision to resign to pressure the Centre. Twelve Ministers faxed 'a joint letter of resignation' to AICC president Sonia Gandhi stating that the Centre's latest stand virtually putting the statehood on hold caused confusion and anguish.