The signs are imperceptible but unmistakable. The Congress wants to take control of the Telangana movement so that in the event of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, it would get maximum electoral benefit out of it. According to analysts, this only means that the Congress is seriously considering delivering Telangana but is only concerned about electoral dividends.
The first indication of its intentions came when the Congress, which does not usually attack TRS chief K Chandrasekhara Rao for fear of incurring the wrath of the people of Telangana, went into an overdrive, calling him names.
The provocation was: Chandrasekhara Rao equated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a chaprasi and called Indira, Rajiv and Sonia betrayers of Telangana. For the first time, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who usually does not react to political broadside against him or the Congress, fumed, “You are the leader of a sub-regional party, not even a regional party. Know your stature first before making comments on national leaders like the prime minister.”
Sources said the sudden outburst came at the behest of the Centre. What had apparently hurt Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was the word, betrayer, used by the TRS chief for her. Then followed the expected drill—complaints poured into police stations against KCR for his derogatory comments on the prime minister. Then Vizag District Legal Services Authority issued summons to KCR and TJAC chairman Prof. Kodandaram to appear before it on Feb 15 after a Samaikyandhra leader filed a petition with it. Says former TRS MP B Vinod: “If the Congress wants to take the reins of T movement, it is welcome to do so as long as it delivers Telangana.”
The sequence of events leading to the trenchant attack on TRS suggests that the Congress has not yet ruled out granting statehood to Telangana. Till now, it had a more or less good relationship with TRS, hoping that KCR might merge the party with it. But KCR is understood to have putforth certain demands like making him the chief minister of the new state, his son K T Rama Rao the home minister and nominating his daughter Kavita for the Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat. As the terms were not acceptable, the Congress apparently decided to do away with TRS and when KCR called Sonia Gandhi names, the Congress leaders pounced on him with a vengeance.
Though the Congress game-plan is not very clear as yet on division of the state, at least for the time being, it wants to retrieve lost ground in Telangana. It has apparently asked its MPs and MLAs to argue strongly in favour of Telangana and at the same time, take up a propaganda that KCR was only interested in electoral gains.
When Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said recently that more time is needed to resolve the T tangle because at that time the Congress was hoping for a merger of TRS, the Congress MPs went into a huddle and decided to resign to their Lok Sabha seats. But when it came to actually doing it, there were differences of opinion, with Madhu Yashki, insisting that since Congress spokesperson PC Chacko had said that the Congress was not against Telangana, there was no need for resignations. But finally, he along with his colleagues gave the resignations to Sonia Gandhi’s staff knowing full well that she wouldn’t accept them.
Apparently not convinced with the party’s approach to TRS, some MPs, however, are determined to quit in search of greener pastures in TRS. But those to whom no guarantee has been given by KCR for fielding them in the next Lok Sabha elections are having second thoughts over resigning because if they do, they would get neither a Congress nor a TRS ticket. For instance, G Vivekananda has no competitor for Peddapalli in TRS. In case of Ponnam Prabahakar, the TRS cannot take him since they have a candidate in B Vinod for Karimnagar seat. As regards Madhu Yashki, he cannot take the risk of resigning because KCR wants his daughter to contest from Nizamabad.
The Sunday Standard