All eyes to be on meeting over Telangana

Hyderabad: With speculations about the impending division of Andhra Pradesh state reaching fever pitch, all eyes are focused on the Congress Working Committee meeting being held in New Delhi on Tuesday.

Political circles in the state were in a tizzy as the Congress high command again summoned the recalcitrant chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and the state congress chief Botsa Satyanarayana. Both of them have been asked to be available to the central leadership last minute consultations.

The much awaited CWC meeting will be followed by a meeting of the coordination committee of the United Progressive Alliance headed by Congress. It is believed that after the CWC finalises its stand on the issue, the party will try to enlist the support of the allies as it wants to bring a bill for the formation of a Telangana state in the Parliament session starting from August 5.

Congress circles were agog that a formal decision to create a Telangana state would be taken at the union cabinet meeting before the session starts.

AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh dropped a clear hint that a final decision was on the way. “Consultations were over, only decision is left”, he said in New Delhi on Monday.

However, he said he didn’t know about the agenda of the CWC meeting.

Meanwhile, the Congress leaders from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions were coming under increasing pressure from the pro-unity lobbies to resign. The houses of Congress MPs as well as some central ministers were besieged by students across the two regions. Students opposing bifurcation of the state demanded that the MPs and ministers should resign immediately.

The agitators targeted the residences of Congress MPs A Venkatram Reddy in Anantapur, Sai Pratap in Kadapa, L Rajagopal in Vijaywada and the camp office of union minister K Sambasiva Rao in Eluru. The protestors had a scuffle with the police and security forces.

Meanwhile, several Congress leaders from the two regions including state ministers and MPs met chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy to discuss the latest situation and finalise their strategy to counter a Telangana state.

One section of the ministers was advocating that they should resign immediately as resigning after the decision will not make any difference.

But others were of the opinion that no immediate decision was likely as several issues including the status of Hyderabad were yet to be settled.

The question of whether the proposed state will be confined only to the ten districts of Telangana or two districts of Rayalaseema will also be merged to make a Rayala-Telangana state was still open. But the idea was facing vehement opposition from all directions.

The Telangana forces including Telangana Rashtra Samiti and Telangana Joint Action Committee as well as the BJP have decided to oppose the idea. They were demanding a geographic Telangana region as a separate state with Hyderabad as its capital.

Even the people and the parties of Rayalaseema were also opposing any move to divide their region and some of them were demanding that the region should be made a separate state.

There were speculations that some Congress politicos of Anantapur and Kurnool, with their business interests in Hyderabad were ready to support the idea.

But the status of Hyderabad city itself was a bone of contention between the supporters and opponents of Telangana. Telangana protagonists want the city to have a capital of its own but people of the other regions want a joint capital. Another idea thrown in the air is that Hyderabad can be a joint capital of the two states for five years. During this period the city will be a centrally administered area through a lieutenant governor.

The fight over Hyderabad city was important because 55 per cent of the state government’s revenues and 65 per cent of the central government revenues of Andhra Pradesh were generated in the greater Hyderabad area. Andhra-seema people were apprehensive that if Hyderabad city was given to Telangana, they will be starved for resources in the future.

They contend that they also played an important role in the development of Hyderabad city over the last six decades and they should continue to benefit from the city in future. Privately it is the big businessmen and investors of Andhra and Rayalaseema region who were more worried about the fate of their own interests.