Hyderabad, January 29: Denying a slow down in the Telangana movement, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief K Chandrasekhar Rao said today that he preferred a sustained agitation rather than something that rose like a high tide one day and ebbed the next, as happened in 1969.
Addressing government employees from Telangana who are on a relay hunger strike called by the Telangana Joint Action Committee at Gagan Vihar here, the Telangana leader blamed Congress MLAs and MPs for the delay in realising the dream of Telangana. ‘’These people could not do anything when Telangana was merged with Andhra. Now they are unable to make the government remain committed to its Dec 9, 2009 statement either. They are fit for nothing.”
Telangana would be a certainty if just 20 MLAs of the Congress resigned from the Assembly, he said. The TRS leader said Congress MLAs have a slavish mentality. “They are meek and subservient to the party high command and do not have the guts that Jagan Mohan Reddy’s MLAs have. The Congress leadership has not done anything to the MLAs who are attending Jagan Mohan Reddy’s meetings but Telangana MLAs are worried over what the party would think of them if they speak up in favour of a separate state.”
The TRS president said he wants the movement to be run on democratic lines. “Is it necessary that there should be violence and arson for a protest to qualify as a movement? We are taking the movement forward in a novel way and this will be more effective than creating trouble,” he said.
He wondered why Andhras were still in Telangana though the people here wanted them to leave. He dared chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy whether he had the courage to replace some of the deputy commissioners in the commercial taxes department with Telangana officials. “All the 11 deputy commissioner posts are in the hands of Andhras,” he said and wondered how long the chief minister will take to sign the file that has gone to him proposing promotions to Telangana engineers in the irrigation department. Others who spoke included JAC chairman Prof M Kodanda Ram and Telangana Praja Front leader Veda Kumar.
–Agencies