Telangana -- A distant dream now

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Creation of Telangana state will now be a distant dream, now that Y S Rajasekhara Reddy has become the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh once again.
The Congress high command will only toe Rajasekhara Reddy’s line on the contentious issue – as it happened in the last five years -- and it is unlikely to be any different now. As is widely known, Rajasekhara Reddy is “personally” opposed to the division of Andhra Pradesh.
Though the Congress returned to power in Andhra Pradesh in 2004 with the promise of creating a separate Telangana state, Rajasekhara Reddy ensured that the issue did not move forward beyond the customary talk on “respecting the sentiments of people of the region.” The UPA government constituted a committee headed by Pranab Mukherjee to look into the demand for Telangana state and possibly arrive at a consensus on bifurcation of the state. It took more than four years for the three-member committee to make out that there was no “consensus” on the issue despite the fact that all major and minor parties, barring the CPM had supported the demand. In fact, it was the Congress party that did not spell out its stand to the Pranab committee till it was quietly wound up. AICC president Sonia Gandhi always spoke only one word on the issue: “We are not opposed to Telangana.”
Of course, to ward off criticism that he became the stumbling block in the creation of Telangana, Rajasekhara Reddy too constituted a committee of legislators from the state Assembly and the Legislative Council on the very last day of the final session of the Legislature early this year to look into issues related to the creation of Telangana state. The committee, for all practical purposes, remains only on paper.
Now, with the Congress bagging 50 out of 119 Assembly seats and 12 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, it has become clear that people of the region did not buy the argument that the ruling party “betrayed” them on the separate statehood demand. Of course, the Congress suffered many setbacks in the region with some of its top heads falling in the electoral battle. Notable among them were Pradesh Congress Committee president D Srinivas, ministers G Chinna Reddy, T Jeevan Reddy, G Vinod, J Ratnakar Rao, Md Fareeduddin, D Redya Naik and senior leader Palvai Govardhan Reddy. D Srinivas, Chinna Reddy and Jeevan Reddy were in fact those who stirred up the Telangana sentiment way back in the year 2000 when the separatist TRS was not even born. Subsequently, they too fell in line with Rajasekhara Reddy and stayed quiet on the Telangana issue. Analysts were quick to note that their defeat was largely due to such topsy-turvy stance on a critical issue that was linked to the sentiments of the people.
Interestingly, Lok Sabha nominees like Madhu Yashki Goud in Nizamabad and Ponnam Prabhakar in Karimnagar came up trumps despite the Congress faring badly in the Assembly segments. Yashki has been one of the most vociferous on Telangana and a bitter critic of the Chief Minister on the separate statehood issue.
Rajasekhara Reddy, however, succeeded in silencing the Telangana vocalists in the Congress party by wielding his clout at the high command.
“As senior leaders we know what happened in the last five years on the Telangana issue. Now that he has enhanced the strength of MPs from the state, only Rajasekhara Reddy’s word will prevail on all matters and so we can’t think of Telangana happening any time in the future,” one senior MP from the state observed.