The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Rayalaseema leaders talk tough on separate Telangana

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 05, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Rayalaseema leaders talk tough on separate Telangana

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI, JULY 4. Rayalaseema protagonists, who met here on Sunday to discuss the fate of their region in the context of the separate Telangana movement fast gaining ground, declared that it should be either a unified Andhra Pradesh or separate statehood for Rayalaseema as well. "We shall either stay unified or break into three if the separation of Telangana is inevitable," says a unanimous resolution adopted at the meeting.

The meeting held under the aegis of the Rayalaseema Studies Centre was attended by a cross section of society covering academia, bureaucrats, lawyers, engineers, farmers and mediapersons. Initiating the deliberations, the founder president of the centre, Bhuman, sought to make it clear that left to themselves, people of Rayalaseema would never wish to break away from a unified Andhra Pradesh and said that if it were to happen, the blame should be taken by the TRS president, K. Chandrasekhar Rao. He also assailed the AICC president, Sonia Gandhi, for including the Telangana issue in the UPA's Common Minimum Programme.

He ruled out the possibility of Rayalaseema staying with coastal Andhra after the separation of Telengana as he alleged that it was Andhra leaders who denied justice to the Rayalaseema region in terms of irrigation water, land and posts.

He lashed out at the undue haste with which the coastal leaders were trying to project the Guntur-Vijayawada zone as the new capital of the Andhra-Rayalaseema combine without even a formal consent of people of Rayalaseema.

Mr. Bhuman, however, said Rayalaseema would not mind staying united with the coastal Andhra provided Tirupati was made the capital as the TTD endowed with its enormous resources could be the nucleus for the new formation.

Chandrasekhar Reddy, who was made the general secretary of the Rayalaseema Parirakshana Committee, constituted at the end of the meeting to spearhead the movement, squarely blamed the leaders of coastal Andhra for the emergence of the TRS. He alleged that it was their continued neglect and lack of concern for people of the backward Telangana region that triggered the separate Telangana movement and feared the same fate befalling Rayalaseema also if the region was not delinked from coastal Andhra.

The former Vice-Chancellor of S.K. University, Anantapur, Venkata Reddy, disfavoured breaking the State into three regions but instead sought to prevail upon Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao and the Congress high command to see the ground reality and give up the separatist agenda.

The CPI(M) district secretary, K. Murali, made a scathing attack on the Congress for the manner in which it played into the hands of Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao for its own political ends.

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