Sonia to mediate on Telangana

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Congress central leadership decided to step in and try to defuse the crisis arising out of the resignation of six Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ministers from the YS Rajasekhara Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh.

The AP chief minister and Union Labour Minister K Chandrashekhara Rao will meet here on July 20 in the presence of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her advisers, to thrash out all the issues that led to the resignation.

Five TRS ministers had submitted their resignations to the chief minister who had chosen not to forward them to the governor. Reddy then left on a foreign visit to play down the resignation issue. But it further widened the chasm between the TRS and the government.

After waiting patiently to hear from the government and rebuffing Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh's repeated telephone calls, Chandrashekhara Rao unbent enough to have lunch with him but refused to let the matter rest until he had spoken to Gandhi.

The TRS articulated its grouses when its ministers addressed the media in Hyderabad shortly after resigning from the council of ministers.

"We were never taken into confidence by the chief minister on any policy issues, particularly those pertaining to the Telangana region. His anti-Telangana stance include the construction of the Pulichintala project, which compromises the interest of the Telangana region, despite our repeated pleas to shift the project," G Vijayarama Rao, who resigned as the civil supplies minister had said."The chief minister has stepped back on the peace initiative with the naxalites," he added and also on the implementation of the government order, which envisages rectifying the injustices done to the locals in government posts," Rao said.

The government has set up a group of ministers to study the demand. The common minimum programme refers to the creation of a states reorganisation commission but does not make any commitment on the creation of a separate Telangana state.

However, those in the know say the differences are ideological which were aggravated because of the chief minister's style of functioning. The meeting is expected to iron out these wrinkles in the relationship.