Hyderabad, February 19
The Telangana movement suffered a setback with the ruling Congress on Fridaypulling out of an all-party Joint Action Committee (JAC) and deciding to tread a separate path to achieve the statehood goal.

The JAC, comprising Telangana representatives of Congress, TDP, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, BJP and several civil society organizationsfighting for statehood cause, has been showing signs of falling apart since the announcement of the Justice Srikrishna committee by the Centre to examine the statehood issue.

Accused of being dominated by TRS, the JAC had given a call for en masse resignations of elected representatives from the region to protest against the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the five-member panel which has been asked to go into the demand for bifurcation as well asthe demand for united Andhra Pradesh.

However, the JAC call fell flat with only two of 50 Congress legislators from Telangana submitting their resignations while themain opposition TDP putting a rider saying that its MLAs would put in their papers only if the ruling party members offered to quit. All theten TRS MLAs have quit from the Assembly.

“We have decided to come out of the JAC and set up our own Telangana Action Committee. We will continue to mount pressure on the Centre to expedite the process for creation of separate state,” senior Congress legislator and former Home Minister K Jana Reddy said after a meeting of his party MLAs and MLCs here.

What has irked the ruling party is the JAC’s call for “social boycott” of elected representatives who have refused to quit. The Telanganaactivists have been attacking the residences of ministers and legislators across the region.

“Resignations will not help achieve the statehood goal. We can put across our case before the Srikrishna committee and the UPAgovernment. We are confident that there will be a favourable decision,”  Reddy said.

On the other hand, the JAC convener Prof M Kodandaram remained unfazed by Congress walking out of the grouping and asserted that the movement would be intensified further.

“We will unveil a road map of our agitation in a couple of days. We strongly believe that only through resignations we can mount pressureon the Centre to grant statehood,” Prof Kodandaram said.

Rejecting the ToR of the Srikrishna Committee, he said it would not serve any purpose as creation of new states had to be a political decision of the government.

Meanwhile, a spectre of violence looms large over the city in view of the “Siege Assembly” programme tomorrow by Osmania Universitystudents’ Joint Action Committee (JAC).

Declaring the protest rally as illegal, the state police department has made elaborate security arrangements to maintain law and order. Over 20,000 personnelfrom police and paramilitary forces are being deployed and prohibitory orders have been imposed.