Hyderabad, December 07: Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K Chandraekhar Rao’s fast entered the eighth day today.
PCC president D Srinivas, Telanagan ministers and senior Congress leaders and MPs visited the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) and met Rao and enquired about his health from doctors.
The PCC president went to the hospital from the rear entrance and spent nearly 30 minutes with the TRS chief discussing the political situation and his appeal to Rao to call off the fast. Later he returned as silently and sent a report to the AICC headquarters. He said he would do all he could to end the crisis. According to TRS leaders, the TRS president urged the PCC chief to take personal interest in solving the Telangana issue.
Ministers Sabita Indra Reddy, Sunita Laxma Reddy, Komatireddy Venkata Reddy, D Sridhar Babu and Ponnala Laxmaiah, and several others visited NIMS and interacted with the TRS chief for more than an hour, and urged him to call off his indefinite fast.
The ministers said that they had not gone there for a discussion with the TRS chief. They said they urged him to call of the agitation. They declared that they were committed to the demand for Telangana State.
The TRS chief is believed to have expressed unhappiness at the ministers’ stance and said they lacked commitment.
He asked them to go to Delhi, instead of wring a letter, to impress upon the party high command the need for statehood. Congress MP G Vivek said they would be meeting Sonia Gandhi on Monday. “We will explain to Sonia Gandhi that Telangana State would be viable, even economically,’’ he said.
Nizamabad MP Madhu Goud Yashki said Telangana public representatives should espouse the cause of the region and carve a niche in its history or prepared to be branded as betrayers. “Resignations and suicides will not achieve Telangana. Only a mass movement will do,’’ he said. APSRTC chairman and senior Congress leader M Satyanarayana Rao, PRP MLA Anil, MLC Bhanu Prakash and several other leaders also met Rao.
–Agencies