HYDERABAD: The tension that brews in the state’s Congress camp is evident, even as it is the same party that rules the country. Agitating Congress leaders in Telangana fear that a failure on the Centre’s part to react to the ongoing series of suicide by the region’s youngsters for a separate state could inspire their peer group in the region to initiate an armed struggle to attain their dream.
It was only recently that Yadi Reddy of nearby Rangareddy district committed suicide in the vicinity of Parliament in the national capital, fearing that the UPA government might go back on its promise to carve out a Telangana state.
Congress MP Madhu Yashki recalls how the 1969 Telangana movement drew several youths to join the ultra-Left People’s War Group. He feels the frequent sacrifice of lives by Telangana youths these days may help change the ‘lax’ mindset of the decision-makers in Delhi, but laments that the martyrs will leave a negative effect on the psyche of those spearheading the Telangana movement. “‘For any sensitive person,” says Yashki, “attempts to take own life is indication of people’s frustration. This applies even to my Congress high command as well.”
The leaders of the region are making repeated appeals to the people not to commit suicide. The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for Telangana has, on several occasions, appealed the youngsters not to give up on their fight by committing suicide.
Such exhortations, though, have failed to stem the trend. So much so, some political parties have even started giving monetary support to those families which lost their dear ones. Telangana’s own Congress unit, after much dilly-dallying, decided to give Rs one lakh to each ‘martyr family’, but the plan was abandoned after distribution was over in four out of the 10 districts of the region. Why? The party’s Telangana leaders don’t have a definite actor to it. Unconfirmed reports said that more than 300 people of the region sacrificed for the cause of separate Telangana in the last two years, though doubts have been raised time and again over whether the reasons for most of them ending lives was over personal matters. It’s another matter that several ‘martyrs’ have left suicide notes addressing even the ruling UPA’s chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh besides Union minister Jaipal Reddy, demanding the formation of separate Telangana.
“Such suicides have disconcerted all of us,” says actor-politician K Chiranjeevi. He, all the same, wants leaders of both Telangana and Andhra not to make provocative statements.