The Hindu : Azad grounds CFT leaders' gameplan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 11, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Azad grounds CFT leaders' gameplan

HYDERABAD, JAN. 10. The decision of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) to hold talks with regional parties like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi for arriving at poll adjustments is bound to turn curiouser with the decision-making power centred in the hands of Delhi leaders.

The CWC member, Ghulam Nabi Azad, has said poll partners cannot impose pre-conditions on the party for holding talks. The TRS' pre-condition that political parties must make their stand clear on Telangana seems to have cut little ice with the All-India Congress Committee. The categorical assertion of the CWC leader that no one could bulldoze the party into making further concessions on the issue beyond its already announced support for a second States reorganisation committee comes as a snub to a section of Congress leaders in the Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee.

Leaders of the erstwhile Congress Forum for Telangana (CFT), now in the Telangana Regional Congress Coordination Committee (TRCCC), face a piquant situation. The CFT leaders who are suspected to have deliberately promoted the image of the TRS under the impression that they would play a primary role in the deliberations are in for a shock now.

The hardened stand of the party in refusing to hold conditional talks with the TRS would show them in poor light, they fear. The CFT leaders had not bargained for this `insignificant' role when they campaigned for a separate committee and they had declared that they would play a key role in holding discussions with the TRS.

Now, it turns out that alliances will be decided by the AICC on the basis of its own intelligence and surveys.

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