Hyderabad, December 09: The Bharatiya Janata Party State unit has demanded that the ruling Congress party take the initiative to introduce a resolution for formation of separate Telangana in the winter session of the Legislative Assembly.
Leaders and activists of the BJP led by its State president Bandaru Dattatreya staged a sit-in in front of the Assembly entrance on Tuesday morning in support of their demand. The agitating activists raised slogans against the Congress government’s indifference in resolving the issue in spite of the widespread protests and incidents of violence across the region.
Arrests
Mr. Dattatreya charged the Congress and the Telugu Desam with hatching a conspiracy to avoid mention of the word separate Telangana in the Assembly. Criticising the Congress for not fulfilling its repeated assurances on Telangana, he questioned as to why the TDP was silent on the issue despite the political turmoil in the State.
BJP MLA G. Kishan Reddy said the BJP would block vehicular movement on the national highways on Wednesday if the government did not respond to its demand positively. The police, however, arrested the agitating leaders who were released later.
Meanwhile, activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the BJP, staged a demonstration in front of the MLA quarters. The ABVP activists demanded that the MLAs from the region cutting across party lines, mount pressure on the government to move a resolution in the Assembly.
The activists raised slogans against Ministers Danam Nagender and M. Mukesh Goud who reportedly aired their views in favour of separating Hyderabad from the ongoing agitation for separate Telangana.
Intervention sought
Later, a BJP delegation urged Governor N.D. Tiwari to intervene in view of a ‘constitutional crisis’ facing the State following the separatist agitation by the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and send a report to the Centre on the situation and the need for conceding the demand of people.
In a memorandum, the delegation, headed by B. Dattatreya, said the continuous agitations and bandh calls had paralysed life. ‘A few anti-social elements are taking advantage of the situation and are resorting to violence’. It said due to ‘all pervasive uncertainty, misconceptions and misgivings’ were being spread leading to distrust among people of both the regions. If the situation continued it would affect the basic harmony of society, it said.
The memorandum states that only a separate State would end the ‘continued and continuous discrimination and injustice’ against people of Telangana.
It wanted the Governor to ‘instruct’ the Centre to initiate all measures to propose the bill for division of the State.
–Agencies