Telangana flock plead for face-saver

HYDERABAD: A face-saving formula has been formulated for the flock of Telangana ministers to get back to work. In a meeting with chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy Saturday evening, they reportedly urged him to secure a ‘positive’ signal from the Centre so that they would have something to show to their constituents in Telangana.The broad lines of this arrangement go like this: sometime next week, Telangana Congress leaders are likely to be invited to Delhi by the high command and allowed to present their case. After which high command functionaries will signal that the much-touted ‘wide-ranging consultations’ with all parties will begin soon. Upon receiving this assurance, the T flock will return to Hyderabad and proclaim success of their pressure tactics against the Delhi bosses. Seemandhra Congress leaders too will travel to Delhi to present their side of the story.Preparatory to these maneouvres, chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana met Saturday afternoon to get on the same page. Later, Telangana ministers allowed themselves to be invited to the chief minister’s presence to take the move further. They pressed Kiran Kumar for a face-saver formula, and tossed up several proposals. Some suggested a deletion of clause 14 f of the Presidential Order, some wanted a stronger signal of intent towards separate statehood.All but two ministers went to this meeting. The two who stayed away included Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, who had committed himself to a party out of town but communicated his assent to the facesaver moves, and P Shankar Rao who did not go.Sources said Venkat Reddy’s gambit of staying away from the meeting was to wrest an assurance that he would not be dropped from the cabinet when a reshuffle is next effected.