TRS MLAs stay away from voters

Ruling party legislators are hesitating to tour their constituencies in the wake of the RTC staff stir and the suicide of two staffers after the RTC workers have begun questioning them in public.

The striking workers are reminding the TRS leaders that they had played a vital part during the statehood agitation. The separate state was achieved only when the TRS and all the associations and trade unions of employees and workers worked together.

In Mahbubnagar recently, RTC workers gheraoed minister V. Srinivas Goud and pulled him for asking Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to address the demands of the striking workers, as he was part of the joint action committee during the statehood movement.

An additional source of embarrassment is that since 2004, many ruling party MLAs have been serving as honorary presidents for RTC unions in bus depots in their respective constituencies, Finance minister T,

Harish Rao had served as honorary president for the Telangana Mazdoor Union, and resigned only on February 1.

Some of the MLAs privately admitted that they could not meet the CM though they requested appointments. RTC workers were questioning them about their demands and asking them to take the issue to the notice of Mr Rao, they said. They had no answer to give the strikers.

The senior MLAs are also in a state of dilemma on whether or not they should support the RTC workers with whom they have a close association and had worked together during the statehood agitation. The RTC union leaders have been questioning the silence of the senior MLAs on strike. They pointed out that the legislators did not even express condolences to the families of RTC workers who had committed suicide.