HYDERABAD: Thanks to their resignation gambit, the Telangana Congress leaders are able to tour their constituencies freely and without fear for the first time since December 2009. Aided by helpful advice from TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao and the kid-glove treatment by their own high command, the leaders have achieved what they set out to do: be seen as putting pressure on their own party but not so much as to be expelled.Further, the moves of the last two weeks have left the Congress in a much happier place than the other parties in the state. While the resignations have left the TDP with both internal and external worries, the Congress has slowly navigated itself out of the crisis.Congress MPs Madhu Yashki and Ponnam Prabhakar have recently toured their constituencies of Nizamabad and Karimnagar comfortably, a frightening prospect six months ago. The loss to the ruling party has largely been contained with the TRS and its affiliate agitators not turning up the heat too much in Telangana and YSR Congress chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy sparing it an attack on the Samaikya Andhra front.When he made a courtesy visit to the Telangana leaders’ protest camp at Indira Park on July 13, Chandrasekhar Rao gave the fasting leaders the reassuring guarantee that his party would not raise the temperature further in the region which might have forced the Congress leaders to press for acceptance of their resignations. The TRS leader also assured the Congress MPs and MLAs that their resignations would not be accepted by the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and Assembly. Thus assured, the Telangana Congress leaders embarked on negotiations with their high command for a face-saving escape from their predicament. This is likely to be unfolded by the high command when Telangana Congress leaders are summoned to Delhi this week. They are likely to be sent home with a favourable statement on Telangana by the UPA.On the other side of the border, the Congress party’s situation was helped immeasurably by the YSR Congress party which took an indefinite stance on bifurcation. Also, in the heat of the resignation drama in Telangana, Jagan’s followers did not join the Seemandhra leaders in working up hostility to any move to bifurcate the state. Jagan did not announce a clear-cut stand on bifurcation and left it to the central government to solve it in the interests o all. This was music to the ears of the Congress which had been anticipating a fire-and-brimstone stance by the young MP polarising the opinion on both sides of the fence.In Seemandhra, the YSR Congress leaders did not take part in any activity of the Samaikyandhra movement into which several TDP leaders have jumped. Its spokesman Gattu Ramachandra Rao said no direction was given to the party leaders in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema to take part in or keep off the Samaikyandhra movement.
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