Opinion - News Analysis   

Telangana movement losing steam?

S. Nagesh Kumar

The rebellion by senior Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader Santosh Reddy seems to have pushed on to the backburner the demand for a separate Telangana.

UNEASY ALLIANCE: Telangana Rashtra Samithi leaders K. Chandrasekhara Rao and A. Narendra. — Photo: Satish. H

CREATION OF a separate Telangana State appears to have temporarily yielded place as the top priority for Union Labour Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K. Chandrasekhara Rao. He is busy tackling the fallout of a rebellion in the TRS by senior leader S. Santosh Reddy.

A staunch Congressman until he hitched himself to the TRS bandwagon and became Minister in the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet, Mr. Santosh Reddy fell foul of the TRS chief after insisting on an internal discussion on the party's debacle in the recent municipal elections.

The TRS chief had forced Mr. Santosh Reddy and five others to resign from the State Cabinet in protest against the "anti-Telangana" stand of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Yet he and A. Narendra remained in the Union Cabinet claiming their continuance was essential to mobilise support in New Delhi for a separate Telangana.

This stand had created a peculiar situation. The TRS considers Congress President Sonia Gandhi as the saviour who will help realise the dream of a separate Telangana State and Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy an outright political foe. Relations had soured to such an extent that Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao declared his chief foe earlier, N. Chandrababu Naidu, to be better than Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy.

Mr. Rao managed to avoid a vertical split in the TRS after expelling Mr. Santosh Reddy and dissuading party MLAs from deserting him. He then added a new dimension to the controversy by accusing the Chief Minister and his political adviser, K.V.P. Ramachandra Rao, of conspiring to engineer a split in the TRS. While the Congress hardly conceals its glee over the TRS leader's discomfiture, Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao must surely be looking at the undercurrents within his party. All those who sympathised with Mr. Santosh Reddy are considered Mr. Narendra's loyalists.

The crisis in the TRS was precipitated largely by the poor performance in the municipal polls. It managed just two municipalities, a far cry from its spirited showing in 2004 when it won 26 Assembly and five Lok Sabha seats. Of the 932 municipal wards in Telangana, the TRS won just 75 compared with the 415 won by the Congress. Clearly, the difference this time was Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao's decision to fight the elections without an alliance with the Congress.

Mr. Rao had burnt his bridges with the Congress when he allowed Mr. Narendra to launch unbridled attacks against it and to talk of bloodshed if there was opposition to the demand for a separate Telangana. He himself gave a call to the voters to defeat the Congress. Such extreme postures did not go down well with the electorate just as Mr. Naidu's single-point agenda of highlighting corruption in preference to local issues did not.

Controversy has been dogging the TRS for quite some time now. It drew heavy flak for floating a lathi-wielding outfit, the Telangana Jagarana Sena, which was seen as an RSS-like organisation. This was an embarrassment to Mr. Rao vis-à-vis his relations with the Congress since his number two, Mr. Narendra, has his origins in the RSS.

These developments have forced the TRS to cry halt to the frequent deadlines it was issuing for carving out a Telangana State. The party is a signatory to the United Progressive Alliance's common minimum programme, which states that the Telangana demand would be considered "at an appropriate time after due consultations and consensus."

Not amused by the TRS' attacks against the Congress, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who heads the UPA sub-committee to look into the Telangana issue, has categorically stated that it would not be possible to put Telangana in fast-forward mode as the TRS wishes. Unlike in the past, the UPA leadership cannot ignore the views of Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy who feels that the emotional integration of Andhra Pradesh has taken place long ago.

Because of geographical reasons and also for being neglected while under the feudal yoke for a long time, Telangana has lagged behind the more prosperous coastal Andhra region. However, the overall growth rate in several districts is now picking up.

It was not surprising that the demand for bifurcating the country's fifth largest State into Telangana and Andhra has surfaced time and again. Marri Chenna Reddy led the separate Telangana agitation in 1969 only to become Congress Chief Minister of an integrated State later.

Two separate agitations, the second for an Andhra State in 1972-73, have set back the State's development by several years. But they have far from settled the issue of integration.

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