5 ministers give it a miss

HYDERABAD: The cabinet sub-committee meeting to take stock of the situation in the wake of Telangana employees serving a strike notice on the state government that they will go on an indefinite strike from August 17 turned out to be a perfunctory exercise at the Lake View Guest House here on Thursday.Of the eight members, only three _ deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha, Anam Ramnarayana Reddy (finance) and N Raghuveera Reddy (revenue) _ turned up at the meeting. It wound up the work quite early since they could not discuss at length the contents of the strike notice because five of the members were not present.Those who stayed away from the meeting were Danam Nagender, Basavaraju Saraiah, D Sridhar Babu, M Mukesh Goud and Dharmana Prasada Rao.After winding up the meeting, Ramanaryana Reddy told mediapersons that the ministers who made it to the meeting discussed the contents of the strike notice. He said a decision was yet to be taken on the demand of the employees that a committee of retired judges be constituted to supervise the implementation of the Presidential Order and a legislature committee to implement GO 610."The five ministers who could not come to the meeting were pre-occupied with other work and they are not available in Hyderabad," Ramanarayana Reddy said and that after a thorough discussion on the notice the committee would report to the chief minister on what could be done to defuse the crisis.According to employee union leaders, the perfunctory manner in which the meeting was held only showed how much interest the government was paying to them. They also pointed out that some ministers on the sub- committee had in fact resigned and that was the reason for their absence.Since the employees' main demand was introduction of a T bill in Parliament, the state government was not making any effort as it was Centre's subject.