TRS’ ultimatum on Telangana issue

UP IN ARMS: Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrasekhar Rao (fourth from left) along with party men in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) on Wednesday set a deadline till March 6 for a formal commitment on statehood for Telangana by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, failing which, it said, it would ask four party MPs, 16 MLAs and three MLCs to resign.

The TRS chose March 6 for resignations en masse as the party wanted to utilise the budget sessions of Parliament and Assembly to focus the seriousness of the action. Thereby, the party also wanted to give a 50-day leeway to the UPA Government to take steps, TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao told a news conference here.

Mr. Rao said the TRS decided on resignations as a matter of warning to the Government that it would be forcing elections on people which could spell doom to the ruling Congress. Moreover, the move was aimed to mount pressure on the Government to concede the demand during the budget session which was the last opportunity available for it in the current term of Parliament.

Beyond the session, the issue could not be settled due to constraints of time.

He added that the composition of the present Parliament was ideally suited for creation of separate Telangana as over two-thirds of parties supported the demand in writing.

Bus yatra


Mr. Rao also said the MPs, MLAs and MLCs would use their respective fora to explain why they had to resign and how Congress and Telugu Desam ditched people of Telangana. They would immediately go on a bus yatra to all mandal headquarters in the region to inform public. The TRS chief added that the party was left with no other option to achieve the goal of separate Telangana as the Congress was dilly-dallying after giving a firm commitment to people before 2004 elections that it would concede the demand.

In the face of growing discontent within its party, the Congress had now reversed its stand on second States Reorganisation Commission and offered to give statehood to Telangana based on the report of the Cabinet sub-committee headed by Pranab Mukherjee. If the Congress was committed to its word, Mr. Rao urged the party to inform its stand to Mr. Mukherjee’s panel, which it had not done so far, and seek the report within a week.

The Government should initiate the process of creating the State as soon as the report was obtained.