The convention of Seemandhra Congress leaders at Ministers’ Quarters here on Thursday heard in rapt attention as four ministers who met two AICC high commandos in Delhi on Wednesday breathlessly recounted the bad news they had learnt.
The ‘intelligence’ they came back with and shared with the flock at a swanky club house was this: they have decided to give Telangana.
The account rendered by M/s T G Venkatesh, Erasu Pratap Reddy, Kasu Venkata Krishna Reddy and P Viswaroop of their meetings with Ghulab Nabi Azad and Vayalar Ravi was, uncharacteristically, fulsome and graphic.
For that reason, sceptics dubbed it as an orchestration of alarms.
Sources in the convention said Venkatesh and Pratap Reddy led the presentation and they said they were told that the Congress high command has made up its mind to form a Telangana state to contain Jagan Mohan Reddy.
As painted by the duo, the view from the Centre is that the Congress thinks it’s a nohope situation for it in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema in the face of the Jagan onslaught and the party may be salvaged at least in Telangana if a separated state is given.
“When we urged Vayalar Ravi not to divide the state, he wanted to know (rhetorically) how many seats the Congress would win if Andhra Pradesh were kept united. He asked us whether we would be able to contain Jagan in Seemandhra in the present scenario.
On the other hand, in the event of a bifurcation of the state, the Congress would win a good number of MP seats in Telangana as the TRS is willing to merge with the Congress,” one member of the foursome reportedly told the assembly.
So, in the telling of the four, Vayalar was warned that the government of Kiran Kumar Reddy would collapse within moments of an announcement of statehood for Telangana. And the AICC man is learnt to have replied: “We know that.”
He went on to add that the Congress was ready to risk the loss of its state government.
The convention was told that the high command seemed to be unconcerned about the possibility of mass defections from the party in the event of a Telangana announcement.
As quoted by one of the foursome, Ravi even told them, “If any one of you wants to quit the party, do so immediately. We are ready to set up a new team in Seemandhra.”
Ravi reportedly made light of the objections of the four that division of the state would call open sesame to disputes over water sharing “Is Rayalaseema not getting water from Karnataka after formation of Andhra Pradesh? Don’t you have a Tungabhadra Board for sharing of river waters with Karnataka? Similarly, inter-state agreements would take care of water sharing among new states,” Ravi was quoted as saying.
And when the four ministers warned of a violent backlash in Seemandhra, Ravi is said to have dismissed that threat: “Why are there no agitations in your region for a United Andhra now while there is an intense movement in Telangana? Have you taken part in any agitation in your region?” The four minister told the convention that the response from Azad was similar.
He is said to have admitted that the Dec.
9, 2009 statement of then home minister P Chidambaram was a mistake but one from which there was no going back.
The four ministers’ attempt to paint a picture of horror for the benefit of the Congress leaders at the convention was in sharp contrast with the cockiness of Seemandhra lobbyists thus far that a Telangana state would never be.
Giving credence to the sceptics, serial Telangana baiter Lagadapati Rajagopal seemed cocksure that the state cannot be bifurcated with the political cards stacked as they are.
Speaking in New Delhi, he said there was no way in which the bill of separate statehood would come to pass.
However, while the four minister sought to lend a sense of urgency to the proceedings of the convention, the Seemandhra flock kept itself to the rather pedestrian response of sending a petition- bearing delegation to Delhi in Jan 21 to stymie any bifurcation move rather than to resign en masse as they they done in 2009.
