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Cracking the whip on those defiant Congressmen openly supporting the demand for a separate Telangana state, the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) on Thursday announced the suspension of party legislator R Papa Rao 'for anti-party activities'.
In an informal chat with newspersons in Hyderabad, APCC president M Satyanarayana Rao said that the suspended legislator has also been served a show-cause notice to 'explain why he should not be expelled from the party'. The legislator has been given seven-days' time to reply to the notice.
"Papa Rao has crossed all limits. We were forced to take action against him for criticising the Congress and for joining the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (floated by former deputy speaker K Chandrasekhar Rao)," the APCC chief said.
Party sources said that Satyanarayana Rao's quick action was a sequel to the letter written to him by Congress Legislature Party leader Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy on Wednesday demanding disciplinary action against Papa Rao, MLA from Sircilla in Karimnagar district.
In fact, a large number of party workers from Sircilla had, earlier on Wednesday, submitted memoranda to the CLP leader and the APCC chief seeking Papa Rao's expulsion.
They said that Papa Rao had not only aligned with the TRS and attended its Simha Garjana rally at Karimnagar in May but also criticised the Congress high command on the separate Telangana state issue.
The workers drew attention to Papa Rao's 'party hopping' - he had earlier been with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and NTR-TDP - and claimed that he had no support among party workers in his constituency. They also accused him of ignoring his constituency.
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