Hyderabad, February 25: Reposing faith in Congress President Sonia Gandhi that she would concede to the demand of Telangana state sooner or later, Congress Working Committee member G Venkatswamy exhorted the ”Telanganites” to continue relentlessly with their struggle for realising their long-cherished goal in a ”peaceful manner”.
”I am still continuing in the CWC as I firmly believe that Ms Gandhi will deliver Telangana to us”, he said yesterday after receiving the award in memory of former Republican Party of India
President Eshwari Bai.
”I earnestly hope that Telangana will become a reality in my lifetime”, the Octogenarian leader added.
He said ” We should follow the Gandhian path till our goal is achieved and realise the dream of Eshwari Bai who fought for the same cause in 1969”.
Appealing to the students not to resort to suicide, he said a major difference during the 1969 agitation and the present movement, was that hundreds of students were killed in the police action then. But now the students are taking the extreme step due to the delay coming in formation of Telangana.
He recalled he was one of the leaders who had pleaded with the Centre for not merging the then Hyderabad state with Andhra Pradesh in 1956 as the First States Reorganisation Commission had clearly recommended against the forced merger.
——–Agencies