Taking objection to the UPA decision, TDP MLA Devineni Umamaheswara Rao appealed to the Congress party’s Seemandhra leaders to stop blaming other parties for the present crisis and instead exert pressure on their party’s high command to prevent the division of Andhra Pradesh.
Mr. Umamaheswara Rao expressed his strong protest against the State’s separation during his visit to the TDP office here on Monday, even as the Samaikyandhra activists continued their protests all over the Nellore city.
Mr. Umamaheswara Rao asked Congress Ministers and MLAs from Seemandhra region to realise that all sections of people in the region were now seething with anger at the UPA move and it was these leaders’ sole responsibility to make AICC president Sonia Gandhi reverse the process of separate state formation.
“Instead of putting up fake protests here, these Seemandhra Congress leaders should resign and register their protest in front of Sonia Gandhi’s residence and the Prime Minister’s office. If they do not act now, they will face the wrath of the people in the coming days,” Mr. Umamaheswara Rao said.
He told Minor Irrigation Minister T.G. Venkatesh and Nellore Rural MLA A. Vivekananda Reddy to stop misleading the people of Seemandhra at this juncture.
Mr. Umamaheswara Rao asserted that there was a spontaneous outbreak of agitation from Seemandhra people and this came as a big blow to the aspirations of the Congress top leadership, which was bent up on diverting the attention of the entire country from the corruption-tainted regime of UPA-II.
He said that the attempt to split AP was a calculated move to trigger demands for separate states in different parts of the country as this would help set ‘statehood sentiment’ as the agenda for the 2014 elections.
Mr. Umamaheswara Rao said that it was now for the ruling Congress leaders from Seemandhra region to undo the damage and meet the aspirations of the people here.
During the day, the Samaikyandhra Students Joint Aaction Committee and different organisations held rallies and protest programmes all over the city. They forced the Government offices to close down as part of the continuing bandh.
