Telengana Rashtra Samithi MLAs and activists block the road in front of the Assembly during their demonstration for a separate Telangana state........

New Delhi, August 24
As expected and on the advice of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President A.P.J Abdul Kalam has accepted the resignation of the two Telengana Rastra Samiti ministers K. Chandrashekhar Rao and A Narendra with immediate effect.

Clearly, Dr Singh waited for some time to see if the agitated TRS leaders would change their mind. That was not to be with Mr Rao having gone on an indefinite dharna since yesterday for carving out a separate Telengana state.

Compelled by his own party colleagues and to boost the sagging image of the TRS in Andhra Pradesh, Mr Rao was compelled to take the extreme step of resigning from the government and bidding adieu to the UPA coalition arrangement.

In his seven-page letter to the Prime Minister along with a copy to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Mr Rao found it intriguing that 80 weeks had passed and the promise of according statehood to Telengana remains unfulfilled.

Claiming that a clear consensus on the formation of Telengana state had already been achieved, the TRS chief stressed that the TDP was the only party which was opposed to it.

He insisted that the time was ripe for forming Telengana state and maintained there cannot be any solution to the problems faced by the people of Telengana within the integrated state of Andhra Pradesh.