In the latest twist to the never-ending tussle for Telangana, the ministers of Andhra Pradesh hailing from the Telangana region have withdrawn their resignations from their posts after AP Congress in-charge Veerappa Moily and PCC President D Srinivas told them to do so.
The ostensible reason is that Chidambaram has said that there will be talks on January 5, 2010, with all recognized political parties of AP on the vexing issue, which is being interpreted by the ministers, all belonging to the ruling Congress party, as, well, the ultimate success of their move.
D Srinivas averred that the call for talks on January 5 itself meant that the process for the formation of Telangana was underway. He also differed with
CM Rosaiah's comments to the media yesterday that industry was moving from AP. He said that the Telangana struggle is quite old, and industry would not move out because of that.
The withdrawal of resignations sparked off instant furore from the hotbed of the agitation, Osmania University, with the Osmania students' JAC declaring the ministers as personae non grata, and threatening to beat them with slippers if they dared set foot on the campus after this.
Sensing that the ministers might anyway not bother to do that, the JAC also enjoined the people of the constituencies of the ministers not to allow the ministers to set foot there.
TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao has meanwhile said that he will talk to the ministers and encourage them to refrain from withdrawing their resignations as that would mean a setback to the movement.
Critics of the resignations (read: TDP) have stuck to their usual stance saying that nobody knows who the resignations were submitted to in the first place, and that everybody knows that the resignations are invalid since all ministers together resigned through just one resignation letter.