PM says no hasty steps on Telengana

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is today understood to have assured a delegation of Congress Members of Parliament (MPs) from Andhra Pradesh that the Centre would not act in haste in the matter of creating the new state of Telengana out of Andhra Pradesh.

The assurance came even as there were growing protests in the coastal and the Rayalaseema regions of Andhra Pradesh against the plan to split the state and more legislators, including many from the Congress, handed in their resignation letters to express their anger over the move.

Protests were staged in places like Tirupati and Kurnool, where markets were shut down, trains stopped and buses set on fire by angry mobs.

The MPs, who included Union Ministers M M Pallam Raju, D Purandeswari and Panabaka Lakshmi, are learnt to have told Dr Singh that the Government's announcement on Wednesday night that the process of forming the new state would be initiated, had led to a backlash.

Mr Pallam Raju told reporters that the delegation had conveyed to Dr Singh during the 40-minute meeting that the time was not congenial for the creation of a new state. He said the mood in the state was for it to remain united. He pointed out that most people in other parts of Andhra Pradesh had relatives in Hyderabad and many people from other regions came to the city to study.

The MPs told journalists that Dr Singh had taken note of their sentiments and told them that nothing would be done in haste.

Official sources, when contacted, did not give any details about the meeting, except to say that the Prime Minister gave the MPs a patient hearing. Union Law and Justice Minister M Veerappa Moily was amongst those present at the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Centre's announcement on Telengana has sparked off similar demands from those campaigning for Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Bundelkhand and Harit Pradesh in Uttar Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Maru Pradesh in Rajasthan.

Leaders of the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, led by former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, now the MP from Darjeeling, met Mr Chidambaram and demanded an early decision on the creation of Gorkhaland. "We do not want to stay with West Bengal," they said. Mr Jaswant Sigh said the demand for Gorkhaland was the "oldest" such demand in the country. He also spoke out in favour of Maru Pradesh in Rajasthan, his home state.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati held a press conference in Lucknow to come out in support of the demands for separate states of Bundelkhand and Harit Pradesh, saying that she and her party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, had always been in favour of smaller states.

Many of the protests in Andhra Pradesh have got to do with the status of Hyderabad, which falls in the Telengana region. While those demanding the creation of Telengana assume it will be the capital of the new state, people in other parts of Andhra Pradesh are not willing to let go of the city. And then there are those who have suggested that Hyderabad should be made a Union Territory.

Union Home Secretary G K Pillai waded into the controversy today by telling reporters in Jammu, "Hyderabad, I think will always be the capital of Telengana." Later in the day, Mr Pillai retracted his statement, saying that he did not state that Hyderabad would be the capital of Telengana.

The Centre had announced late in the night on December 9 that the process of forming the new state of Telengana, out of the present state of Andhra Pradesh, would be initiated.

The announcement came as an agitation launched by the Telengana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) for a separate state threatened to spin out of control. TRS chief K Chandrasekhara Rao, 55, had been on a fast unto death in Hyderabad and his health was deteriorating, forcing the Centre to speed up its efforts to defuse the crisis.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told journalists on Wednesday night that an appropriate resolution on the formation of the new state would be moved in the Andhra Pradesh state legislative assembly.

Mr Chidambaram had said the decision had come after extensive consultations at the highest level in the Government earlier on Wednesday

He pointed out that the consultations were held after the return of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday night from his three-day visit to Russia. He said consultations were also held with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister K Rosaiah, who was in the capital on Wednesday.

That same night, Mr Chandrasekhara Rao had called off his fast and the former Union Minister was discharged from hospital in Hyderabad today.

Telengana is that part of Andhra Pradesh which corresponds to the Telugu-speaking part of the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad, which lies on the Deccan plateau to the west of the Eastern Ghats.

It includes the districts of Warangal, Adilabad, Khammam, Mahabubnagar, Nalgonda, Rangareddy, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak and Hyderabad, the capital.

Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 and in the years that followed there were growing complaints in the Telengana region that the promises made to them had not been kept. These finally led to a students' agitation in 1969 that was marked by widespread violence and the deaths of scores of people.

The demand for a separate state was kept alive in one form or the other and in 1971 some leaders left the Congress to form the Telengana Praja Samiti, but they later returned to the party. In the 1990s, the National Democratic Alliance government at the centre could not take a decision on the issue because of the stand taken by its coalition partner Telugu Desam Party.

The TRS was formed with the single point agenda of creating a separate Telengana state with Hyderabad as its capital. In the 2004 elections to the Lok Sabha as well as the State Legislative Assembly, the Congress struck an alliance with the TRS with the promise of a separate state.

The Congress came to power in Andhra Pradesh and the party led the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at the Centre, with the TRS as one of the coalition partners. Mr Chandrasekhara Rao also joined the Union Government as a minister, but the UPA remained indecisive on the issue, forcing the TRS leader to withdraw his party's support to the Government in September, 2006.

Telengana was an issue ahead of the General Elections this year and all the major parties in Andhra Pradesh came out in support of the cause.

The Congress returned to power both at the Centre and in Andhra Pradesh and the alliance of which TRS was a part lost badly in the state. On September 2, then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who had returned to power with a convincing mandate, died in a helicopter crash.

Mr Rosaiah, who took over as Chief Minister, is not considered to be politically tough the way the late Mr Reddy was and this, many believe, encouraged Mr Chandrasekhara Rao to start his indefinite fast demanding the formation of a separate Telengana state.

NNN