HYDERABAD: The Congress party high command is the only hurdle to creation of Telangana state, senior Congress leader and APSRTC chairman M Satyanarayana Rao has remarked and said in the same breath that only the Congress will be able to carve out the new state before the 2014 elections.
As the senior leader turned 79, several party leaders and his family members called on him at his official residence at Tarnaka here on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters, Rao, who participated in the 1969 agitation, said some leaders who were playing a key role in the party high command were preventing formation of a separate state but he was not willing to reveal their names. He said people of the region still believed that only the Congress would deliver the new state and hoped that the party would fulfil the people's aspirations before the general election in 2014.
Rao praised chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for governing the state effectively and said that Reddy was concentrating on strengthening the party at the grass roots by implementing several welfare and developmental programmes.
He said the high command itself was encouraging leaders to aspire to the post of chief ministers because of which there were several aspirants now.
Reiterating his wish to serve as a governor in some state, he hoped the party leadership would consider him whenever such an appointment was to be made.