HYDERABAD: Miffed Telugu Desam Party leaders from Seemandhra have a new demand: If we can't have a united Andhra Pradesh, we want our separate country and our separate parliament.

At least half a dozen senior TDP leaders, including MPs, have echoed this bizarre demand in the last few days. Leading the pack is TDP MP and industrialist Modugula Venugopal Reddy, who shot to infame after threatening suicide with a broken microphone in the Lok Sabha moments after the Telangana Bill was to be tabled on Thursday. "Give us our own parliament. We will be a separate country like Bangladesh and Pakistan," he told reporters.

"When Parliament does not bother about sentiments of Seemandhra people and give respect to the region's MPs, what is wrong in the demand for a separate country," he told TOI on Saturday. Venugopal Reddy went on to add: "Five crore denizens of Seemandhra are subjected to `genocide' by Sonia Gandhi who is not bothered about their concerns."

Incidentally, many Seemandhraites active on social media have been posting comments echoing these sentiments. A Facebook group on "Seemandhra, a separate country" has been created, though it has few takers. One of the comments was: "When there is no respect for Andhras, there is thinking whether we should be part of this country or not." Former minister and Telugu Desam legislator Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu has been repeating the demand for a separate country is also part of the separatist chorus.

The demand for an independent Seemandhra has its genesis in posters put up in Nuzvidu of Krishna district in October last year in the name of town TDP president Nutakki Venugopala Rao. "Not the division of the state, we want separate nation for Seemandhra. Andhra people need protection from fake Gandhis. Our goal is separate country for Seemandhra," the poster read.

Senior legislator Payyavulu Keshav, who has been the face of Samaikyandhra movement in the Telugu Desam, said, "Are we living in India. Are we not part of India? We are forced to feel like aliens in our own country."

Former minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy was the first senior TDP leader to voice the nation desire. He repeated the statement several times, the latest being on Friday. "If a separate state can be created on the basis of self rule, why should south India not be a separate country on the same plank," he said adding, "that day is not far away".

Former minister and TDP leader Bojjala Gopalakrishna Reddy did not see anything wrong in the demand. "In fact India should be like the European Union, where countries have their own independence." He even named the Seemandhra `country' as Telugu Desam or the nation of Telugus.

These extreme demands have raised the hackles of many hardcore United Andhra activists. "If they want to convey that they are so shocked at the proposal to divide Andhra Pradesh that they have lost their mental balance, I am afraid this not the message that's getting across," said R N Ramamohan Rao, a resident of Visakhapatnam. What party president Chandrababu Naidu thinks about the rantings of his partymen is not known because he was on a trip of rural AP and TOI's efforts to contact him were futile. But Telangana activists and lawyers from the region are planning file a sedition complaint at New Delhi's Parliament Street police station.