Hyderabad:  The Congress may manoeuvre its way towards a compromise with its partymen from Telangana, who are scheduled to quit en masse today. They say they can no longer accept the Union government’s indecision on whether to create a new Telangana state.
Eight Congress MPs from Telangana who were scheduled to resign from the Lok Sabha this morning have skipped an appointment in Delhi with Speaker Meira Kumar. Andhra Pradesh has 42 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Eight of these MPs belong to the Congress and are from Telangana. In addition to their resignations, 36 Congress MLAs, of whom ten are ministers in the state government, have said they will exit today.
And in a sign that a truce is being aggressively negotiated, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, “They were supposed to submit the resignation. Now we have requested them that we would like to have another round of talks before they finally submit their resignations. MPs are already here and I am expecting MLAs to reach here by afternoon. we will again have one or two rounds of talks.”
Politicians from Telangana say their voters will not forgive them if they don’t sacrifice power for the cause of a new state for their homeland. Privately, they admit what they want is to force the Centre to suggest that it has not given up the idea of bifurcating Andhra Pradesh.
Thirty one members of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) who are members of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly are also scheduled to quit today.
Political analysts say that if the bulk resignations do transpire, President’s Rule may have to be considered for Andhra Pradesh.
For the Congress, which is in power in Andhra Pradesh, the math is formidable. Out of 294 seats in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, Congress has more than 150 seats, its ally the Praja Rajya Party (PRP) has another 18. Together, they stack up to the figure of 168, well above the half-way mark of 147. But if 36 MLAs go ahead with their plan and resign, it will bring the numbers to 132, thus spelling crisis for Congress in the state.
The movement for a new Telangana state is opposed heavily by leaders from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. Not least because it raises the matter of who Hyderabad, with its booming IT economy, would be awarded to in case of a partition.
The revolt within the Congress over Telangana is not new. And its reinvigoration may stem from the fact that a few days ago, K Chandrasekhara Rao, or KCR as he’s known, warned in a public speech that “Telangana will burn” if the PM doesn’t deliver on a promise made by his government in 2009 to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh.
On December 9, 2009, the Centre had announced that the process for formation of a separate Telangana state would be initiated. This after 11 days of fasting by KCR, and massive violent protests in the Telangana region. However, after leaders from the non-Telangana areas of Andhra Pradesh objected, political parties in the state u-turned away from the path to a new state.
The Centre set up the Srikrishna Commission which travelled to different parts of Andhra Pradesh to gauge what people and their representatives really wanted. The Commission presented six options to the Centre. Since then, the government in Delhi has said only that it is assessing these options.