Congress legislators from Telangana have asked the Centre to provide a Rs 2,000 crore special package for the development of the region.

Of the 48 Congress members from the region, a group of 20 legislators held a meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday to voice their demands.

Briefing newsmen, V Purushottam Reddy, a former minister said: "We want the Centre to treat Telangana as a special backward area on par with Bihar and allocate the money to take up development in this region."

He recalled that the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Communist Party of India, allies of the Congress in the state, had also voiced demands for a Rs 5,000 crore special package for Telangana.

The Congress government is already executing 14 irrigation projects with a massive outlay of Rs 22,337 crore in the Telangana region. The Telangana MLAs demanded that the Centre should allocate more funds for expeditious development in other sectors.

The Congress legislators also demanded that a committee be appointed to implement Government Order Ms 610, which provides for the repatriation of government employees from other regions working in the Telangana region.

"We are solidly behind Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy. We are confident that YSR will do justice to the Telangana region," the Congress MLAs said, rubbishing allegations of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which had pulled out six ministers from the state cabinet on the grievance that the chief minister had taken action and decisions that hurt the interests of the Telangana region in the last 14 months.

"We are committed to a separate Telangana state. The issue is left to All India Congress Committee President Sonia Gandhi [Images]. We are confident she will take a positive decision. We will wait for her decision," Purushottam Reddy said.