Congress' wooing, TRS remains firm on its stand

Hyderabad, Sep 16 (UNI) The Congress, seeking to appease the estranged ally TRS, said it would not field a candidate against TRS Chief K Chandrasekara Rao, who had recently submitted his resignation from Lok Sabha, for the bypoll from Karimnagar.

While Pradesh Congress President K Keshava Rao, addressing a press conference here, described the TRS as a 'prepoll partner of the Congress and a UPA constituent, senior TRS leader A Narendra, who had quit the UPA Government along with the Party supremo, told UNI that the party had decided to go on a war path to realise statehood for Telangana.

Asserting that the Congress was committed to Telangana issue, Mr Keshava Rao said UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi was striving hard to evolve a consensus on the issue.

''Can we field a candidate against the leader of UPA constituent'', he asked.

However, Mr Narendra, a former RSS member, said, there was ''no logic'' in continuing in the UPA. ''The UPA Government failed to extract a concrete assurance from the Congress on the Telangana issue,'' he said.

On September 23, the TRS Chief would go to New Delhi and call on Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to authenticate his resignation letter and meet UPA constituents to explain his party's stand before withdrawing support to the UPA Government, he said, adding '' after resigning from the UPA Government, we have morally come out of the UPA. Withdrawal of support to the Government is only a technical aspect.'' Challenging all Congress MPs and MLAs to put in their papers and seek a fresh mandate from the people, Mr Narendra said ''the Congress had no option but enter the poll arena. The bypoll would be a 'referendum' on the statehood issue''.

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