Telangana Congress MPs vow to boycott AP Day

HYDERABAD: Telangana Congress leaders will meet at the Exhibition Grounds here on Saturday to decide their course of action with the indications coming from Delhi not being very encouraging on creation of a separate state of Telangana.Party MPs from the region, who met at panchayat raj minister K Jana Reddy’s residence on Thursday, discussed among other things, making a fresh representation to the party high command to announce a road map for Telangana state.“We are not asking for an announcement on creation of Telangana but a road map as to how the Congress wants to go about the issue,” Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabahakar said after the meeting.The MPs decided to boycott the AP Formation Day celebrations on November 1 which they declared as a `black day’ for Telangana. “We will not participate in the celebrations since it marked the anniversary of the merger of Telangana with Andhra,” Prabhakar said. The nine MPs, who are in the forefront of taking up the region’s cause with the party leadership, returned the security to the police department. They analysed the import of prime minister Manmohan Singh’s statement on Telangana and inferred that it was not totally against Telangana.“The prime minister did not say there would be no Telangana. He said consultations have to take place. What is wrong in that?” asked Prabhakar. Rajya Sabha member K Keshava Rao, who was to leave for Delhi in the day, postponed his journey and went to Jana Reddy’s residence to take part in the meeting. Rao said he would lead a delegation of MPs to the party high command to get to know its mind on formation of Telangana since he had some signals.The Saturday meeting would be wide-ranging and exhaustive in which DCC presidents and district-level leaders too will participate.It is expected that the dates for the visit to Delhi will be decided at the meeting and the action plan fine-tuned. At the previous meeting of the steering committee, several issues had come up. They included formation of a Telangana Congress front with Congress leaders after coming out of the party or forming a Telangana forum with participation of leaders from other parties operating in the region.