Sonia asked to decide Andhra's next CM

The suspense over the election of a new leader of the Andhra Pradesh Congress legislature party is likely to persist for at least one more day with the CLP passing a unanimous resolution empowering party president Sonia Gandhi to chose the new leader.

K Rosaiah, who resigned as the chief minister earlier in the day, had moved the resolution.

"I am confident that Sonia will chose a leader to acceptable to all," he said in his address to the CLP meeting, which was also attended by the four senior Congress leaders Pranab Mukherji, A K Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Veerappa Moily..

In another resolution, the CLP thanked Rosaiah for the services he rendered as the chief minister during last 15 months.

The CLP meet at the committee hall in the state assembly building was attended by 148 of the 156 MLAs and 40 MLCs. Significantly, YS Jagan and his mother Vijay Lakshmi were absent from the meeting.

Rosaiah's resolution had become imminent because of conflicting claims by different groups and regions that the new leader should by of their choice.

While Telangana leaders were demanding that the new leader should be from their region, the Andhra and Rayala Seema legislators were divided in different groups, one of them siding with Jagan and another supporting the Speaker Kiran Kumar Reddy.

Pranab said that Andhra Pradesh had a very special place in the heart of Sonia and that she wanted the party to be strong and united in the state.

Before the meeting, two Jagan loyalists -- Mekapati Chandrasekhar Reddy and Adi Narayan Reddy -- had claimed that a majority of legislators were with Jagan and that if any action was taken against their leader, they will not keep quiet.