The Telangana movement on Tuesday gathered further steam with TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao and party MP Vijay Shanthi resigning from their Lok Sabha membership in support of the demand for a separate state.
Chadrasekhar Rao and Shanthi faxed their resignation letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker. Rao would meet the Speaker personally in a day or two, TRS sources said.
State textiles minister Shankar Rao, who is in the US, has also faxed his resignation to the deputy Speaker, taking the total number of state ministers who have quit to 12.
However, Rao has only resigned from the assembly and not from the Cabinet.
75 MLAs and a dozen MPs had quit on Monday to mount pressure on the Centre for an early announcement in favour of separate statehood demand.
Chandrasekhar Rao represents Mahaboobnagar Lok Sabha constituency while Shanthi represents Medak constituency.
TRS and the Telangana political Joint Action Committee (JAC) have been demanding en masse resignations by MPs, MLAs of Congress and TDP to force the Centre to accept the separate statehood demand.
Speaking at a meeting here last night, Chandrasekhar Rao described the resignations of public representatives as historical and demanded that the Centre take the en masse resignations into cognisance for accepting the demand.