Logo

Logo

‘Troubled times ahead if Telangana is carved out’

statesman news service Hyderabad, 10 July Congress leaders from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema are like coiled springs ready to burst…

statesman news service
Hyderabad, 10 July
Congress leaders from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema are like coiled springs ready to burst anytime with a large majority anticipating that the Congress high command would announce Telangana on 12 March. The overwhelming feeling is that they are going to lose Hyderabad, even though it&’s in the middle of Telangana.
Once the core committee makes this clear on Friday or the next, no one knows fully what would be on the integrationists’ table. Will there be resistance? This is a foregone conclusion. The pro-integrationist sentiment is not spoken in the same breath as the pro-Telangana sentiment, but the fact is it exists and that too strongly. The agitation when it begins would be a bottom to top movement.
“When we were kids there used to be a slogan that said ‘what is left for us other than chains, slavery and oppression’. We are there. Andhra Pradesh is at a dangerous cross roads and that places the country at a similar cross road,” a top leader said.
None has an idea if the leaders could guide and control the agitation. “We (leaders) will think about how to take things ahead. It may not be violent. And we do not believe in provoking people when emotions are already charged. Natural reactions to the development will surely be there. We are actually in for troubled times. This, I can assure you,” a leader said.
Integrationists are at a loss to understand why a Telangana state should be carved.
This is particularly so when the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee, which was set up after the 2009 disturbances, in its first recommendation said that the state should be kept united.
They say that every family in the two regions has an attachment to Hyderabad ~be it their child pursuing higher education, a retailer-wholesaler relationship, a member of the family working here or close relatives and family friends living here. They now feel that Hyderabad is drifting towards the horizon.
“In the delimitation exercise, Seema-Andhra lost 12 seats and Hyderabad the surrounding Rangareddy district added ten of those seats. Why did this happen? Where did these people come from? Certainly not from outside Andhra,” senior Congress leader and staunch integrationist Mr Gade Venkat Reddy asked.
“Nothing short of an integrated Andhra Pradesh is acceptable to us”.
The argument is, Hyderabad has a population of nearly 1 crore and has been developed over decades by people across the three regions.
“You can’t deal with this arbitrarily. BR Ambedkar said Hyderabad should be developed into the second national capital.”
“Let&’s all move that way. If Telangana is inevitable then let them develop their own capital,” he said.

Advertisement