Hyderabad, January 05: Ahead of the release of the Srikrishna Committee report on Telangana, slated for January 6, the Congress leadership has summoned all party MPs from the region to Delhi on Wednesday to urge them to exercise restraint on the issue of a separate State, and not do anything that would create complications for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre.
But with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) having already publicly announced that they would boycott the meeting called on Thursday by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram to release the Srikrishna report, Congress MPs from the region told the agencies that they were under great pressure not just to follow suit, but to keep up the tempo for a separate State. They pointed out that even Telugu Desam Party supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu, too, would in all likelihood, not attend the meeting as a sizeable section of his MLAs belong to the Telangana region — some of them had even threatened to put in their papers.
No compromise
There can be no compromise on the question of Telangana, a spokesperson of the Congress’ Telangana Action Committee said, stressing that the promise of a separate manifesto had been made in the Congress manifesto, in the Common Minimum Programme, in the President’s Address, on the floor of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, and indeed, by Mr. Chidambaram in December 2009. “We have taken a pledge over the dead bodies of the Telangana martyrs,” the spokesman said, stressing, “how can we now go back on the word we gave to the people?”
Mood of members
The Congress leadership has had ample warning of the mood among its members from Telangana — at last month’s plenary session, party MPs from the region had submitted letters to both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reiterating the demand for Telangana, and stressing that if this was not accepted, they would all be forced to resign. Following that, they had gone on a hunger strike, giving it up only after their demand that all those arrested in the course of the agitation were released.
Congress MP Madhu Goud Yaski, whose Nizamabad constituency falls in Telangana, told the agencies, “We won’t be able to enter our constituencies if the demand for Telangana is not accepted.”
Given that of the 17 Lok Sabha members from Telangana, 12 belong to the Congress, clearly this could spell disaster for the party in the coming days. The view among the Congress protagonists of Telangana is that if statehood is accepted, then the Congress can hope to win all the seats in the region, as its only serious rival in the region, the TRS, has promised to merge itself in the Congress if the demand for statehood is accepted. Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, “a staunch integrationist,” has also been asked to come to Delhi on Wednesday, where he is also scheduled to meet Mr. Mukherjee.
–Agencies