Hyderabad, May 23: Accusing Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhara Rao of defusing the Telangana movement, revolutionary balladeer Gaddar Friday said he would float a party to achieve separate statehood through a people’s struggle.
The Maoist sympathiser told reporters that this would not be a mere vote-based party like the TRS but would try to achieve its goal through a people’s struggle, including a cultural campaign.
Gaddar said he would make an announcement after his surgery to remove a bullet from his body.
Gaddar, who had actively participated in the Telangana movement of 1969, said doctors were likely to operate on him to remove a bullet from his lower abdomen, which hit him during an assassination attempt here in 1997. The singer had blamed police for the attack.
‘I will call a meeting of all pro-Telangana intellectuals, poets, singers and activists before formally launching the party,’ he said.
He apologised to the people of the region for sharing a dais with Chandrasekhara Rao, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani and former Andhra Pradesh home minister T. Devender Goud.
‘Inviting Advani to a dharna in Delhi, inviting Goud who suppressed the revolutionary movement as home minister, at martyrs’ memorial and sharing dais with Chandrasekhara Rao at a meeting were my mistakes and I apologise to people for the same.’
Gaddar, who came out of month-long hiding following ‘false’ cases being booked against him by the police, confirmed that several present and former TRS leaders approached him with a request to launch a party.
‘People of Telangana voted for the Congress party which refused to give separate state. The party always maintained the same stand. We all should take lessons from this,’ he added.
He said while former chief minister K. Chenna Reddy abruptly ended the Telangana movement in early 1970s when it was near its goal, Chandrasekhara Rao defused the movement.
Chandrasekhara Rao had floated the TRS in 2000 to revive the three-decade-old movement for separate statehood to Telangana, comprising 10 districts including Hyderabad.
In the just concluded elections, TRS could win only 10 assembly and two Lok Sabha seats in the region.
–IANS