Congress MPs go to Delhi wearing war paint

HYDERABAD: Their foreheads daubed with vermilion tikas, nine Congress MPs from Telangana left for Delhi on Sunday vowing not to chicken out of their intention to quit their membership of Parliament.Notwithstanding the efforts of chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, APCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana and the high command to mollify them, they asserted they would meet speaker Meira Kumar at 11 am and deliver their resignation letters. At the same time, Telangana Congress MLAs and MLCs will meet the presiding officers of the state legislature here to do likewise.Their condition: The Centre must make a clear declaration of intent to create a separate Telangana.Ahead of their departure for Delhi, the MPs assembled at the Telangana Martyrs Memorial at Gun Park where party women tied rakhis to them. After arrival in Delhi, the MPs went to Union minister Jaipal Reddy’s residence for a long deliberation. K Keshav Rao, G Vivekanand, Ponnam Prabhakar and K Sukhinder Reddy urged the union minister to resign too. “We met Jaipal Reddy as he is the senior most parliamentarian from the state. We urged him to resign his MP post and join our fight for a separate Telangana,” Prabhakar said after the meeting. Asked what Reddy’s response was, he said: “He is thinking.”Chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana put in a word but Telangana Congress leaders feigned they were in no mood to listen. “We are not children. We cannot be cajoled,” Keshava Rao said. The chief minister met a few Telangana ministers and discussed with them what could be done should the ministers and MLAs really resign. The Telangana ministers who attended the meeting included Damodar Rajanarasimha, D Sridhar Babu, Basavaraju Saraiah, Ramreddy Venkata Reddy and P Sudarshan Reddy. Kiran Kumar also called DGP V Dinesh Reddy to discuss law and order fallout in case the leaders resign.