Telangana Congress MPs boycott monsoon session

HYDERABAD: Congress party MPs from the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh Sunday decided to continue their boycott of the ongoing parliament session over their demand for a separate Telangana state.At a meeting of the steering committee of Congress leaders from Telangana, it was also decided that the state ministers will continue to stay away from discharging their duties. The ministers will not attend the cabinet meeting convened by Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy Aug 16.The ministers from Telangana have been staying away from their duties ever since they, along with other legislators from the region, submitted their resignations early last month. The state cabinet could not meet for nearly two months.Though the assembly speaker later rejected their resignations, the ministers are not attending their work at the secretariat.Ten MPs of the Congress party, who too quit along with the state legislators, are staying away from parliament session which began Aug 1. Except one, all of them abstained from voting on the price rise issue in Lok Sabha.After the meeting of the steering committee, MP G. Sukhender Reddy told reporters that they would not attend parliament session and that there is no question of any compromise on the resignations. He, however, said if the government faces any crisis in parliament, they would take a decision after talks with party leaders."Our intention is not to bring down the government. We are trying to put pressure on the government to carve out Telangana state," he said.The steering committee, jointly headed by senior leaders K. Keshava Rao and K. Jana Reddy, rejected the demand of Telangana Joint Action Committee that Congress leaders should not participate in Independence Day celebrations.The meeting decided that the leaders, including ministers and MPs, will participate in the celebrations. However, they will hoist the flag of Telangana after unfurling the national flag.This was the first meeting of the steering committee after the central government met a long pending demand of Telangana groups and deleted controversial clause 14(f) from a presidential order which had made Hyderabad a free zone for recruitment to government departments.