Congress’ Telangana moves, shocker to Opposition

As the Congress is inching closer to taking a decision on separate Telangana, the development appears to have come as a shocker to other major parties in the State

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti, a party in the forefront of the separate State agitation, the Telugu Desam Party, the YSR Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are set to suffer adversities, of different magnitudes, if the Congress indeed carves out a separate State, that too a Rayala-Telangana.

 

Uncomfortable position

The TDP finds itself in an uncomfortable position as it could suffer significant losses in Telangana. The TRS will also lose its USP in the event of formation of a separate State since achieving Telangana was its sole agenda in the 11 years of its existence, to the exclusion of focus on evolving policies and priorities.

“Once the goal is achieved, we will be left with the only option – merging the party into the Congress,’’ was how a senior leader summed up the TRS’ position.

The YSR Congress had started feeling the heat as a majority of the leaders from Telangana announced their decision to snap ties with the fledgling party following failure of two rounds of deliberations with the party’s honorary president Y.S. Vijayalakshmi.

The TDP leadership, on the other hand, is facing the heat from its Seemandhra party organisation over the party’s official stand favouring Telangana could boomerang, giving that space to the YSRC whose MLAs forwarded their resignations en masse.

 

Wider ramifications

Mr. Naidu, on his part, is learnt to have been doubtful over whether the ongoing developments in New Delhi would, indeed, culminate into creation of separate Telangana State as it was fraught with wider ramifications that could cast an adverse impact on the Congress’ prospects elsewhere.

Senior TDP leader S. Chandramohan Reddy had cautioned the Congress leadership against dividing the State for “electoral gains” without addressing concerns related to core sectors like revenue and river water sharing.

The TDP president is understood to have convinced his partymen that the Congress would at best decide on the constitution of the Second State’s Reorganisation Commission (SRC) as a safe bet in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.

 

Union territory status

The BJP too was circumspect with its senior leader Ch. Vidyasagar Rao suspecting that the Congress was trying to dilly dally on the issue as was evident from the floaters on union territory status to Hyderabad and Rayala Telangana.