By IANS
Hyderabad : Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly Speaker K.R. Suresh Reddy Friday accepted the resignations of all 16 lawmakers from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS).
The speaker will make a formal announcement in the house Monday, said sources close to the speaker’s office.
The TRS members resigned March 4 along with three members of the state legislative council to protest the central government delay in granting Telangana region full statehood. A day earlier, the party’s four members of parliament too had quit.
Speaker Reddy waited for three days for the TRS legislators to reconsider their decision as Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and opposition parties had appealed to the TRS not to take the extreme step in the political showdown over the statehood issue.
Since the TRS legislators refused to withdraw their resignation letters, Speaker Reddy accepted these.
In their brief submissions to the house before they tendered their resignations to the speaker, the TRS legislators vowed to “expose” the ruling Congress party in the “people’s court”.
All three members of the legislative council put in their papers before Chairman A. Chakrapani, who is yet to take a decision.
The TRS expects that by-elections to 16 assembly and four Lok Sabha constituencies would be held within six months, and hopes to benefit from from public sympathy on the separate Telangana issue ahead of next year’s elections to assembly and Lok Sabha.
TRS chief K. Chandrasekhara Rao, who resigned from the Lok Sabha with three other MPs March 3, returned to Hyderabad Thursday and vowed to intensify the movement for the separate state.
The party plans to hold public meetings in Karimnagar district March 15 and in Mahabubnagar district March 17.
KCR, as Chandrasekhara Rao is popularly known, predicted fall of the Congress party in the next elections. “This is the time to wage war against exploitation, backwardness, hunger and unemployment,” he told newspersons.
TRS, which K. Chandrasekhara Rao formed after quitting the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 2000, fought the 2004 elections in alliance with the Congress.
It won five Lok Sabha seats and 26 assembly seats and joined the Congress-led coalition governments both at the centre and in the state.
Irked over the delay in the formation of a separate Telangana state, the TRS first pulled out of coalition in the state in 2005 and quit the central cabinet in 2006.
Ten legislators rebelled against the party leadership in 2006 while KCR’s deputy A. Narendra was expelled from the party last year for his alleged involvement in a human trafficking scandal.