New Delhi, January 05: A day before an all-party meeting called by the Centre here on the issue of a separate Telengana, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United) have warned the Centre it needed to handle the emotive subject carefully and it would have to create a peaceful atmosphere, in which the matter could be discussed further.
President of JD (U) Sharad Yadav warned that the Centre must step carefully into the thicket of this controversy as it has already opened a Pandora’s Box with all kinds of forces demanding separate statehoods for different parts of the country.
Mr. Yadav suggested the National Integration Council be entrusted with the task of evolving a comprehensive policy for the formation of smaller States that would rule out political parties trying to rouse sub-regional aspirations for narrow political gains.
He warned that if this is not done there would be a heavy price to pay for India. Peace in Andhra Pradesh was also a necessary precondition and the Centre must spell this out firmly, Mr. Yadav said.
While an all-party meeting was welcome, he questioned the wisdom of calling it at this juncture instead of earlier — before the Home Minister’s December 9 statement announcing initiation of the process for the formation of a separate Telengana State to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh.
His charge was that the Congress took a hasty step in its anxiety to get political mileage from the issue leading to an unprecedented people’s upsurge in the coastal and other areas of the State.
Slams Congress
The BJP, which has nominated its State leaders Bandaru Dattatreya and Hari Gautam to attend the all-party meeting, has made its position clear from the start while blaming the Congress of deliberately mishandling the issue. Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said that his party was in favour of smaller States as they made better administrative sense and led to overall efficiency in governance, a view not fully shared by the JD(U).
Mr. Prasad said that the BJP had taken this stand and there was unanimity of views on this within the party, unlike in the Congress which has seen a vertical divide among its MPs, MLAs and others on this issue. The BJP has charged the Congress with not doing its internal homework before raising hopes of statehood for Telengana.
Mr. Yadav was also of the view that at a time when serious challenges faced the country in the shape of rising price of food, floods, drought and terrorism, a new problem has been created that has the potential of violence. It was an issue that must only be discussed when there is no violence or it would be counter productive.
—-Agencies