Unfazed by Congress party expelling six of them for serving a no-confidence motion against it’s the Central government, the rebel Seemandhra MPs vowed to carry on their fight against division of the State.
Minutes after news of their expulsion on Tuesday, these MPs derided the party leadership and asserted that it was a matter of time before the people of Seemandhra would teach it a fitting lesson during the general elections.
The AICC general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi in a press release said that the Congress president Sonia Gandhi has approved the decision of the disciplinary committee of the AICC to expel six MPs of Andhra Pradesh with immediate effect. They are Lagadapati Rajagopal (Vijayawada), Rayapati Sambasiva Rao (Guntur), A. Saipratap (Rajampet), Vundavalli Aruna Kumar (Rajahmundry), G.V.Harsha Kumar (Amalapuram) and Sabbam Hari (Anakapalli). They reiterated their resolve to take their fight against the Congress to the people.
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State Congress leaders Hyderabad maintain that the party’s central leadership could have taken disciplinary action after the main opposition BJP taunted it for not able to rein in the unruly MPs. The BJP leaders have been criticising the Congress floor managers for their inability unable to act against the party MPs for repeatedly disrupting the proceedings of both Houses of Parliament.
Reacting to the expulsion, Mr. Rajagopal said: “Axe may have fallen on us, but, people are ready to mete out same treatment to Congress party also. Expulsion is not going to demoralise us. We are now emboldened to take our fight inside the House. We are all prepared for such an eventuality.” He wondered how the Union government was overriding the interests of the people of Seemandhra and going ahead with the bifurcation process.
Mr. Sambasiva Rao said they had appended their signature on the no confidence motion knowing fully the consequential disciplinary action. “Our notice was not against the Congress party but against the decision taken unilaterally to divide the State,” he remarked. Mr. Saipratap said the Congress party has committed a blunder by expelling them for which it would have to pay a price. The expelled MPs will decide their future course of action after February 21, 2014 he said.
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Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development M.M. Pallam Raju termed the expulsion unfortunate.