For the people of Telangana, their dream to realize separate State for themselves looks like a slip between ‘cup and lip’. It appears so closer, yet remains, for time-being far away!
Any political analyst would like to sum up the aspirations of the people of this region, who had been demanding it for the past five decades. An optimist, that he is, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief K Chandrasekhara Rao, who during his last decade-long struggle, almost close to clinch the deal with the Centre in State bifurcation. But the strong Seemandhra lobby yet again prevailed upon the Centre to pull back its decision in favor of Telangana.
One has to believe the TRS chief and reports that emanated from the New Delhi that the Congress high command, if not think tank, decided to concede the demand in the wake of their arch rival BJP trying to hijack the issue by throwing a challenge to table a T-Bill in Parliament. That apart, the Congress high command indeed has come under tremendous pressure from the party MPs from the region. Added to this was the TDP MPs from the region extending their support for separate State.
While this was happening, the Seemandhra MPs intensified their lobbying against State bifurcation successfully by some of their party’s senior functionaries issuing conflicting reports on the issue.
Whether the party State in-charge and member of the so-called ‘core committee’ formed to look into major issues, including the Telangana statehood, Ghulam Nabi Azad, or the new Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who categorically denied the high command reaching at any decision yet on T-State.
Meanwhile, the confusion got confounded with the TRS chief claiming of receiving positive signals from the Central leadership and the Congress-led UPA-II may as well pronounce a decision before September 14. He even dashed off to Delhi promising his party colleagues as well people of the region that he would return only after ‘finalizing’ the formalities with the centre. Though, his adversaries ridiculed and dubbed it yet another ‘drama’ by KCR who is known for setting ‘deadlines’ and later ‘rescheduling’ them, KCR looked confident this time around and he even summoned all his MLAs to Delhi to partake in final deal ‘struck’ proceedings.
KCR hopes firmly alive and kicking as he has immense faith in the 120-year-old Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, who just returned from US after routine medical checkup.
Now all eyes are set on Delhi for the possible outcome, notwithstanding the fact of the Union Home Minister and party in-charge ruling out any decision immediately in site.
As usually rumor mill is making rounds that the Centre in a bid to fulfill its assurance to the people of the region as well to TRS may as well consider the demand with a rider – that minus Hyderabad, at least for time being. A categorical statement to this effect had been given by the Home Minister on Monday, citing the smaller states facing the left extremist threat. The other major issue that has come to the fore based on alleged central intelligence inputs of possible ‘terror threat’ to some of the major defence lab well CSIR (Central Scientific Industrial Research) abs located in and around Hyderabad.
Questions arise out in that backdrop include;
a) Is T-statehood acceptable without Hyderabad?
b) Will KCR accept Hyderabad as common capital of the two or three regions after bifurcation? (In
fact, though Haryana was bifurcated from erstwhile Punjab way back in 1966 with Chandigarh as
common capital, continues as it is even today). How long? (Will KCR demand for time-frame)
c) Can geographical concessions like Khammam district (in toto or part of it) going to coastal Andhra?
d) Does his party TRS) willing to ‘merge’ once the Congress-led UPA accepts to concede his demand
for state bifurcation?
These and many more are likely to crop up during the proposed one-to-one meeting with Sonia Gandhi, to which the TRS leader is eagerly looking forward to. Many pray and expect that an amicable solution will be found this time around and free the people of all regions from their tensions over possible unrest yet again looming large at them from September 30 ‘Hyderabad March” called by the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC).
–Agencies