Hyderabad, December 07: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state committee said it wholeheartedly supported the formation of Telangana as it had always been in favour of smaller States.
The Telangana demand had a long history of six decades and hundreds of people had lost their lives striving for statehood, it said.
BJP State president B Dattatreya recalled that the erstwhile Jan Sangh had supported Telangana in 1972 and also in 1996 when the BJP passed a resolution at its executive meeting in Kakinada.
Dattatreya maintained that his party was the first to take a decision in favour of a separate Telangana and had thus given fresh impetus to the movement.
Ever since, the party was taking it forward by organising various programmes and planning long-term strategies.
He recalled that it was during the BJP-led NDA stint at the Centre between 1998 and 2004 that three new States were set up. They were supported by all political parties, excluding some Left parties like CPM. TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao was then in the Telugu Desam Party, Dattatreya added.
He said the BJP national leadership was opposed to the formation of smaller states through the Second States Reorganisation Commission (Second SRC) as it would lead to several complications.
New States should be formed on the basis of peoples’ demand and taking into consideration administrative convenience.
The erstwhile BJP-led NDA government at the Centre could not create Telangana State as it had formed the government with the support of the TDP which was opposed to the idea at that time.
Dattatreya wanted to know why AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, who was supporting the formation of Bundelkhand in UP, was not making any statement on Telangana. When all the political parties were seriously backing the movement for Statehood, it was Chief Minister K Rosaiah’s “wrong report’’ to the Centre that was responsible for the Congress Party’s “delaying tactics’’.
The BJP State president urged Governor ND Tiwari to convey a true picture to the Centre.
Medical employees plan st ir
HYDERABAD: The city branch of AP Medical Employees Union has condemned the style of functioning of medical education department officials.
It has decided to hold protest demonstrations on the 18th of this month in all medical institutions belonging to Medical Education, Vaidya Vidhana Parishad, Insurance Medical Services and Institute of Preventive Medicine.
A meeting of the the APMU city branch executive was held today under the chairmanship of Abhimnyu.
The meeting felt that several demands of the staff working in various hospitals being headed by Medical Education department were kept pending without reason.
Several posts were not filled on promotion and pay scales were being denied to several posts, participants in the meeting stated.
Though the director of medical education had promised to conduct a meeting with the union leaders in February this year, so far it did not take place, they alleged.
–Agencies