Hyderabad, March 22: The latest in the efforts of Chief Minister K Rosaiah to take the Congress party closer to the people in Telangana is surely the commissioning of works on four-laning of the National Highway No. 9 between Hyderabad and Vijayawada.
The other important measure was ensuring the passage of the resolution in the Assembly urging the Cenrre to delete Clause 14 (F) of the Presidential Order to make Hyderabad a part of Zone VI insofar as appointments to the police department are concenred.
The four-laning works are the most awaited since the national highway has virtually become a death-trap for travellers, and Nalogonda, through which it passes, has been bleeding since the victims were mostly from the district.
Rosaiah began his efforts unobtrusively to prepare the Congress monolith for the byelections which are due in July in 12 Assembly constituencies which had fallen vacant following the resignation of the legislators in support of the Telangana cause.
Though the resolution in the Assembly appeared in the beginning that it was a small issue, yet Rosaiah managed to send a signal to the people of Telangana that the party was with them when it came to doing justice to them.
He did a lot of homework, allaying apprehensions of the Andhra legislators of the Congress and ensuring that the resolution was passed with a voice vote. Now the Telangana Congress party leaders are gaining confidence that they would be able to tour villages and campaign for the byelections.
Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), which has been championing the cause of Telangana, has of late turned the heat not only on the Congress but also on the TDP, saying that the legislators of the two parties had no commitment to Telangana and therefore they did not resign.
Ever since the Telangana movement picked up momentum in December last year, the legislators of the Congress in Telangana region found themselves in an unenviable situation with the party asking them not to resign but the Telangana people’s sentiment, which has been whipped up by the TRS too often, demanding that they quit the Assembly membership in demonstration of their commitment to the cause.
As the demand for their resignations grew more strident, the Congress national leadership began telling the MLAs that if they resigned, they would be the cause for the downfall of their own government and therefore they should not do it. With the TRS always out there among the people, taking advantage of the Congress MLAs’ reluctance to quit, the legislators were at the crossroads and the Congress in the State did not know how to approach the byelections.
It is at this juncture that Rosaiah began salvaging the party’s image through measures which looked not so important and yet sent a message that the party always cared for the people of Telagnana region and their demand for a separate state.
The first step from Rosaiah came in the form of cancelling the tenders given to a private company for mining coal at Tadicherla in Karimnagar district for APGENCO’s thermal power plant when the TRS demanded that the Congress, by ignoring the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL), had placed on the altar the interests of Telangana people.
Having done this, Rosaiah then did something very unexpected. When Nalini, who resigned as DSP of Medak district in support of Telangana cause, approached him for reinstatement since she was unable to make both ends meet, the chief minister issued considered her plea sympathetically and reinstated her.
Congress leaders believe that these measures would have by now dented the sharp edges of the people’s resentment for the Congress legislators and might even help the party candidates win elections.
——-Agencies