Sulking over missing the ministerial berth in the last week’s expansion of the Union Cabinet, Congress MP from Eluru, Kavuri Sambasiva Rao, has resigned from the Andhra Pradesh Congress Coordination Committee.
Mr. Rao quit his Lok Sabha seat after his name did not figure in the list of MPs selected from the State to join the Union Cabinet.
He sent his resignation letter to party president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He also sent a letter urging the party president to relieve him from the membership of the Parliamentary standing committees.
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Mr. Rao appears to have toughened his stand after news leaked that Daggubati Purandeswari was being elevated as Minister of State for Textiles with independent charge. It was widely reported that it was the pressure exerted by him and Guntur MP Rayapati Sambasiva Rao that the idea of promoting Ms. Purandeswari to the Cabinet Minister’s status was dropped at the last moment during Sunday’s reshuffle.
But the party’s central leadership realised that the Textile portfolio was vacant consequent to the shifting of Panabaka Lakshmi as Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gases. The central leadership immediately decided to move Ms. Purandeswari to the Textiles Ministry with independent charge.
The five-time MP, who hails from the same community as that of Ms. Purandeswari, is not pleased with the party leadership giving her “undue importance”. Mr. Rao is understood to have dashed off a letter to party general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad narrating how he has been ignored. He expressed anguish that his services and loyalty to the party have not been recognised in the just concluded Cabinet reshuffle.
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The Congress MP plans to meet Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar in the next few days to personally hand over his resignation letter. Efforts by the central leadership and PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana to pacify him have not yielded any result so far.