With Seemandhra ministers bent upon going ahead with their in-your-face meeting to scuttle bifurcation moves in Hyderabad on Thursday, their counterparts reacted with resentment and ridicule.
With K Chandrasekhar Rao largely out of action, it has fallen to the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) to raise the temperature against the convention at the club house of Ministers’ Quarters in Hyderabad.
However, KCR’s daughter K Kavitha tried to make up for the absence of her father and urged the state government to withdraw permission for the meeting, and pointed out that attempts by Telangana students to hold separatist meetings in the past had been disallowed on grounds of being injurious to peace.
TJAC chairman M Kodandaram met senior Congress leaders K Keshava Rao and K Jana Reddy on Wednesday and discussed this and other developments.
He also met BJP leaders G Kishan Reddy and Ch Vidyasagar Rao too at the BJP headquarters.
The TJAC chairman would not disclose the details of his parleys.
While fellow members of the Telangana movement railed at Seemandhra leaders for trying to provoke passions, the TJAC chairman preferred to keep it cool.
The committee will only organise a silent protest at Gun Park on Thursday while members of the Telangana employees associations said they would try to disrupt the convention.
As Thursday’s convention is largely being organised by ministers from the Seemandhra regions, led by S Sailajanath, ministers from Telangana felt impelled to make deploratory noises against it.
Telangana ministers D Sridhar Babu, Basavaraju Saraiah and Ponnala Lakshmaiah held a meeting with panchayat raj minister K Jana Reddy at the latter’s chambers in the Secretariat on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters later, Jana Reddy tried to play elder statesman by appealing to his Seemandhra counterparts not to stoke passions at a time when the Congress high command is on the verge of taking a final decision on the Telangana question.
“I appeal to all political parties, Telangana organisations and Congress leaders from Seemandhra that even if they convene meetings they should try to solve the problem and not to provoke,” Jana Reddy said.
“The Congress is like a family.
The Seemandhra leaders should discuss within the party and convey their feelings to the high command,” Jana Reddy said.
The BJP’s senior leader Ch Vidyasagar Rao did not bother to pull his punches.
Taking strong exception to the convention in Hyderabad, he challenged the Seemandhra ministers to take their lobbying effort to the Congress high command’s upcoming Chintan Shivir being held in Jaipur.
The Congress leaders opposed to bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh should try to persuade their high command against it rather than provoke the people of Telangana by staging their convetion in Hyderabad on Thursday, he said.