A first meeting of the four-member committee set up by the Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to hear concerns of the Seemandhra people is expected to meet in the next couple of days.
Mrs Gandhi constituted the committee under the chairmanship of Union minister A.K. Antony on August 7 “to hear the concerns being expressed arising out of the decision to form a new state of Telangana.”
The rest of the members are Union minister M. Veerappa Moily, political secretary to the Congress president Ahmed Patel and AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh, who is also in-charge of party affairs in Andhra Pradesh.
Although the Congress party is firm on its decision to carve out a new Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, it is not going down well in rest of the part of the state. This has been reflected in the current session of Parliament with the Congress MPs from Rayalaseema and coastal area opposing the step. While Congress MPs from Seemaandhra have demanded that Hyderabad should be made a Union Territory, the DP MPs are opposing bifurcation of Andhra.
While six Congress MPs have already given their resignation letters to the secretary general of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress Party, too, has sent his resignation letter, according to media reports.
According to a PTI report from Hyderabad, Congress MLAs and other party leaders from Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra would stage a protest in Delhi on Tuesday against the proposed splitting of the state. The leaders would meet in Delhi and the details of the protest would be decided there, Andhra Pradesh primary education minister S. Sailajanath said.
Several state ministers and the Congress MLAs and MLCs have submitted resignations in support of the united Andhra cause after Congress announced the decision in favour of separate Telangana.
State Congress president Botsa Satyanarayana told reporters that he would not participate in the planned protest.