With Congress MPs and legislators refusing to quit to protest the terms of reference of the Srikrishna committee set up by New Delhi to study the demand the all-party Joint Action Committee (JAC) heading the movement for separate statehood to Telangana is on the verge of a split.

Congress leaders from Telangana, who met here Monday night decided to chalk out their own course of action on the issue, alleging that the JAC was acting at the behest of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief K. Chandrasekhara Rao.

JAC had asked all elected representatives of Telangana to quit by Monday evening, failing which a series of protests would be launched against them culminating in their social boycott from Feb 19.

Only two of 50 Congress legislators from Telangana have submitted their resignations to the assembly speaker, who has not yet accepted them. The speaker, however, accepted the resignations of all 10 TRS legislators as well as one each of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). One legislator of the Praja Rajyam Party has also submitted his resignation.

In the 294-member Andhra Pradesh assembly there are 119 legislators from Telangana while the region accounts for 17 out of 42 MPs from the state.

The Congress leaders, ignoring the deadline of JAC, instead of resigning decided to write a letter to party president Sonia Gandhi to revise the terms of reference of Srikrishna committee and reduce its term to six months.

As they included the considering of demand for maintaining Andhra Pradesh in its present form, the JAC has rejected the terms of reference of Srikrishna panel. It argues that the guidelines violate Dec 9 statement of the centre to initiate the process for formation of Telangana state. (With Input from Agencies)