Hyderabad, January 02: Ahead of the January 5 allparty meet in Delhi on the T issue, State Congress leaders have begun speaking in different voices.
Leading the band of integrationists, Endowments Minister Gade Venkata Reddy said the Congress had never promised Telangana and what the party had been saying since 2001 was that the issue should be referred to a second states’ reorganisation commission. If separatists did not like constitution of an SRC, the Centre could appoint a commission consisting of judges to look into the issue, he suggested.
The minister, who held a press conference at his official chambers in the Secretariat, said Union Home Minister P Chidamabram’s statement on December 9 that the process for the formation of a Telangana State would be initiated was not the Congress stand. ‘‘It is at best the minister’s personal view,’’ he claimed.
‘‘If party president Sonia Gandhi makes a statement on the T issue, which she did not, that will be the party’s stand.
The words of others cannot be considered as those of the party,’’ he pointed out.
Taking serious exception to this, CWC member and MP K Keshava Rao said the Endowments Minister should have studied the party manifesto in detail which clearly promised a Telangana State. The party had used the word consultations repeatedly while pronouncing its stand on Telangana which meant that the party was in favour of creation of a State, he explained.
‘‘Unless the Congress is interested in delivering Telangana why would it invite stakeholders for consultations?’’ he asked and dismissed the need for a second SRC as the first SRC had made it clear that if the people of a region continued to express desire to have a separate State for more than five years, their wish should be considered. ‘‘The people have been asking for a separate State for more than five decades,’’ he said, adding that it was painful watching Venkata Reddy say that the Congress was against Telangana.
Venkata Reddy’s colleague and Civil Supplies Minister J Krishna Rao, who is from Telangana, said the party line became clear from the December 9 statement of Chidambaram
–Agencies