AP CM should quit for ''failure on Babli issue'': TDP

Hyderabad, Apr 18 (UNI) The main opposition Telugu Desam Party today maintained that Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy had no no right to continue in office after ''failing to prevent Maharashtra from going ahead with its illegal projects across the river Godavari''.

''It is not our concern, whether the Chief Minister seeks the intervention of Congress President Sonia Gandhi or fights a legal battle in the Supreme Court. It is not just the Babli project, but 10 other projects Maharashtra is constructing across the river Godavari'', TDP Legislature Party Deputy leader N Janardhan Reddy told a press conference here.

It was the Congress which was in power at the Centre as also in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, he pointed out, demanding that the Chief Minister step down if he could not stop Maharashtra from going ahead with the projects.

The TDP leader criticised Dr Reddy for his ''failure'' to convince the UPA Goverment in convening an emergent Parliament session to take legal steps in the wake of the Supreme Court staying the law providing for reservation to Other Backward Classes, to save the future of OBC students.

He pressed for scrapping of the Union Government order making mandatory printing of ''skull and bones'' logo on the beedi packets, as ''promised'' by the Congress during the recent Karimnagar Lok Sabha By-election.

Asked about the TRS view that the TDP had no no right to agitate after supporting in Parliament the bill in this connection, Mr Janardhan said the TDP had cautioned the then Government not to legislate on the issue before providing alternative occuption to lakhs of beedi workers.

Only with the consent of the then Labour Minister K Chandrasekara Rao, the UPA Government had passed the order, he claimed.

UNI