Rosaiah resigns as pawn to Cong’s Telengana deal?

“I was in an advanced age by the time the responsibility was thrust on me. As chief minister I had to shoulder a lot of work load,looking after various departments and co-ordinating their activities. Nevertheless,I have discharged my duties to the best of my ability,” he said.

Rosaiah,who was always seen as a stop-gap arrangement in the aftermath of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s death in September last year,was in Delhi yesterday and the high command is understood to have conveyed to him about the need for a change of guard.

The resignation also came ahead of a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party in the evening when the leadership question will be discussed.

A battery of heavyweight leaders,including Pranab Mukherjee,A K Antony,Veerappa Moily and Ghulam Nabi Azad,will attend the meeting as central observers.

The resignation immediately triggered speculation over who would succeed Rosaiah with names of Speaker Kiran Kumar Reddy,Information Minister Geetha Reddy and Union Minister S Jaipal Reddy doing the rounds.

Apart from the pinpricks from Jagan,the Congress governments in the state and at the Centre have been facing the ticklish problem of the Telangana statehood demand over which the Justice B N Srikrishna committee is set to submit its report by December 31.

Observers feel the Congress strategy would be to have a government that would face the new situation after the Telangana report is made public.

Among the names of the successors doing the rounds,Speaker Reddy hails from the Rayalaseema region,while both Jaipal Reddy and Geetha Reddy belong to the Telangana region.

68-year-old Jaipal Reddy may probably have an edge as he is considered an integrationist and was not vocal about the separate state demand. Because of his stand on unity,he may also be acceptable to Congress leaders from Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra regions of the state.

Congress politics in Andhra Pradesh has been marked by a sense of some uncertainty ever since the death of YSR,the strong man from Rayalaseema region,whose word counted with the leadership after he delivered to the party in two consecutive elections.

But Rosaiah was in a perennial state of crisis engineered by YSR’s son Y S Jaganmohan Reddy,whose media outlets unleashed an unusual attack on Sonia Gandhi and the Congress last week.

In Delhi,Veerappa Moily said the resignation of Rosaiah was his personal decision and insisted the party government in the state was stable.

Moily said Rosaiah met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and requested her to relieve him from the post after which the go-ahead for his resignation was given.

“Our government in Andhra Pradesh is stable. There is no question about instability,” he told reporters in Delhi,moments after Rosaiah submitted his resignation to Narasimhan.

“Our chief minister wanted to relinquish the post and had met the Congress President. Today after considering everything,the Congress president gave consent for his resignation,” Moily,who is also in-charge of party affairs in the state,said.

Congress Media Department chairman Janardhan Dwivedi said Rosaiah was not summoned and that he had come on his own to Delhi yesterday.

“He had come on his own and expressed willingness to resign citing personal reasons. Today,he was informed that his resignation has been accepted,” he said.