Angry over the delay in formation of a separate Telangana state, seven Congress MPs from the region Monday decided to resign both from parliament and the party.
The MPs declared after a meeting here that they would Tuesday send their resignation letters, addressed to the Lok Sabha speaker, to party president Sonia Gandhi.
The MPs said they would ask the party leadership to take a decision to carve out a separate state in a week or forward their resignations to the speaker.
"We will meet tomorrow (Tuesday) to send the resignation letters and will chalk out our future course of action. This will be our last meeting," said K. Rajagopal Reddy, one of the MPs.
"There is no question of compromise on Telangana. We will join the people to fight for separate state," he added.
There are 17 Lok Sabha members from Telangana region, which comprises 10 districts including Hyderabad. Twelve of the MPs are from Congress and they include three central ministers.
The MPs who attended the meeting are K. Rajagopal Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, Madhu Yaskhi, S. Rajaiah, G. Vivekanand, Gutha Sukender Reddy and Manda Jaganath.
Senior Congress leader K. Keshava Rao and some other party leaders from the region also attended the meet.
According to sources, there were differences among the MPs over the resignations. Some of them felt resignations would not help achieve Telangana and this would only benefit Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
Madhu Yaskhi told reporters that TRS was eyeing 2014 elections and clarified that their only goal was Telangana and not the elections.
He claimed that MPs were using their posts only to fight for Telangana in Delhi and reminded their critics that people of Telangana sent them to parliament.
Reacting to threats by some Telangana groups threatening to target Congress MPs, Yaskhi dared them to target leaders from Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and Andhra regions) creating hurdles in formation of Telangana.
The MPs declared after a meeting here that they would Tuesday send their resignation letters, addressed to the Lok Sabha speaker, to party president Sonia Gandhi.
The MPs said they would ask the party leadership to take a decision to carve out a separate state in a week or forward their resignations to the speaker.
"We will meet tomorrow (Tuesday) to send the resignation letters and will chalk out our future course of action. This will be our last meeting," said K. Rajagopal Reddy, one of the MPs.
"There is no question of compromise on Telangana. We will join the people to fight for separate state," he added.
There are 17 Lok Sabha members from Telangana region, which comprises 10 districts including Hyderabad. Twelve of the MPs are from Congress and they include three central ministers.
The MPs who attended the meeting are K. Rajagopal Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, Madhu Yaskhi, S. Rajaiah, G. Vivekanand, Gutha Sukender Reddy and Manda Jaganath.
Senior Congress leader K. Keshava Rao and some other party leaders from the region also attended the meet.
According to sources, there were differences among the MPs over the resignations. Some of them felt resignations would not help achieve Telangana and this would only benefit Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
Madhu Yaskhi told reporters that TRS was eyeing 2014 elections and clarified that their only goal was Telangana and not the elections.
He claimed that MPs were using their posts only to fight for Telangana in Delhi and reminded their critics that people of Telangana sent them to parliament.
Reacting to threats by some Telangana groups threatening to target Congress MPs, Yaskhi dared them to target leaders from Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and Andhra regions) creating hurdles in formation of Telangana.