The celebrations in Telangana had not even begun in full when the agitations in Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra took over. What started as sit-in protests by student groups and activists after the CWC’s announcement on Telangana have blown up into a mass agitation. Headed primarily by government employees (there are 190 government departments), these protests show no signs of dying in a hurry.
Instead, the spate is swallowing more areas each day, among them Kurnool, Chittoor, Tirupati, Anantapur, Rajahmundhry, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Srikakulam and Kadapa.
The Congress MPs and MLAs from Seemandhra who tamely accepted UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s “final decision” on Telangana are now having to answer their voters. Chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and Opposition leader, TDP president Chandrababu Naidu, are keeping a conspicuously low-key profile. Kiran Kumar is confining himself to the camp office and probably readying his last Aug 15 speech, while Naidu is desisting from making any statements himself and letting other party leaders do the talking.
In capital Hyderabad, rendered the bone of contention by the Andhra split, Telangana and Seemandhra staffers are clashing on different battlegrounds, be it the lic Sadan, the Secretariat or the Jalasoudha. Around 3.5 lakh employees of the AP Non-Gazetted Officers Association have served notice of an indefinite strike starting Aug 12. Its president, P. Ashok Babu, says that given the “inefficiency of the people’s representatives of Seemandhra, it’s up to students, employees and people’s organisations to lead the agitation. We want to create a political vacuum in Parliament and prevent the UPA government from dividing Andhra.” He asks how a people who’ve built their lives in Hyderabad for 57 years can be asked to leave and find another capital.
Since the UPA chairperson has made it clear that there will be no going back on the Andhra decision, the Seemandhra lobby is pushing for the next best option: making Hyderabad a ‘forever’ joint capital or giving it a Union Territory status. When AP affairs in-charge Digvijay Singh hinted at a Delhi-style governance in Hyderabad, the Seemandhra lot also plugged for the city to be declared as the country’s second capital.
Putting fat into the fire was TRS supremo K. Chandrasekhara Rao’s provocative statement that employees from Seemandhra deputed in Hyderabad would have to “go back” to their state. His tame qualifier later that they could retire in Hyderabad and buy flats there did little to undo the damage.
KCR rules out any compromise on Hyderabad, and rejects outright the UT option. Telangana Congress leaders D. Srinivas and K. Jana Reddy have appealed to their Seemandhra colleagues to “accept reality”. Srinivas, a possible CM contender in a new Telangana state, also triggered speculation of a Rayala-Telangana saying he had no objection to the idea of merging Kurnool and Anantapur districts with Telangana. Dismissing KCR’s “go home” statement, he says “settlers” is a word alien to the Congress dictionary. “Anyone who lives in Hyderabad is a Telanganaite,” he emphasises.
The Congress, meanwhile, has formed a four-member committee under A.K. Antony to address the Seemandhra lobby’s concerns. “We’ve been asked to represent our regions’ concerns to the panel,” says HRD minister Pallam Raju. Referring to the panel as a Congress Calamity Committee, TDP Rajya Sabha member Y. Sujana Chowdary wonders how a panel comprising Congress leaders and Sonia’s PAs can decide the fate of Seemandhra’s 13 districts. “The NDA government took the opinions of five CMs when it created three new states. UPA should do the same. The process should involve a broad-based committee of members of various parties and other state CMs.”
