Andhra Pradesh state endowments minister Jupally Krishna Rao became the first minister on Tuesday to resign from Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy’s Cabinet citing the Telangana issue.
Deviating from established norms, Mr Krishna Rao met governor E.S.L. Narasimhan on Tuesday evening and submitted his resignation instead of giving it to the chief minister.
Mr Rao’s resignation will most probably be accepted once the governor receives a formal recommendation from the chief minister. This is the second incident of a minister directly submitting a resignation to the governor. A year back Ms Konda Surekha had submitted her resignation from Mr K. Rosaiah’s Cabinet to the governor. Speaking to this newspaper, Mr Rao said he felt that it was the right time for other ministers from the Telangana to resign from their posts and fight for Telangana.
Mr Krishna Rao said that he had taken the decision to resign in keeping with the promise he had made to the Osmania Students’ Joint Action Committee a few months ago. “First I had submitted my resignation to the AICC president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, a copy of which was submitted to the chief minister. But there was no follow-up in three months. So keeping my word, I have directly submitted my resignation for Telangana,” Mr Rao said.
He added that his decision to quit the ministry would enhance the prestige of the Congress in the region and motivate activists to fight for Telangana with more vigour. Taking a dig at the government, he said that he was pained with the lacklustre attitude of both the chief minister and the state administration in providing protection for him to resume his padayatra from June 1 in the Gadwal Assembly segment.
“I met the CM and the DGP and sought protection as the information minister, Ms D.K. Aruna, had threatened to obstruct me, but so far there has been no word from them about arranging protection for me, what would I do?” he asked.
He said it was a most deplorable attitude on the part of those who wanted to obstruct him from exercising his democratic constitutional right to take up the yatra as a citizen of the country.
He added that he would announce his decision to resume the yatra on Wednesday after getting a response from the administration. Later in the evening, Mr Krishna Rao met Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy and handed over a copy of his resignation letter that had been submitted to the governor.