Andhra Pradesh   

TRS to serve an ultimatum on UPA Government

Special Correspondent

Deadline will be finalised soon, says party leader Narendra

HYDERABAD : Union Minister of State for Rural Development A. Narendra has said the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will serve an ultimatum on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government at the Centre asking the latter to make its stand clear on the demand for separate Telangana.

"We will finalise a deadline for the purpose," he told reporters here on Sunday when quizzed about a TV interview he gave earlier in the day wherein he was said to have threatened that the TRS would decide its future course if the Centre did not announce the decision before the All-India Congress Committee plenary here next month.

Mr. Narendra admitted that the TRS awaited a decision before the plenary. The UPA sub-committee formed to study the demand should at least submit a status report by then.

The report could highlight how many parties in Parliament either favoured, opposed or stood neutral on the demand, he said.

The Minister said the party would mount pressure on UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to expedite decision-making from Monday.

It was not fair to backtrack on the issue for apprehension that the CPI(M) would oppose it. "If the CPI(M) opposes, the BJP will support the bill in Parliament," he said citing the latest example of the passage of the Bill on revival of the State Legislative Council in the Lok Sabha.

The CPI(M) did not even offer a token protest when the Bill was passed despite its opposition.

He said the approval for the Council given by the Lok Sabha had instilled confidence in the TRS leadership. It came to know how to get the bill on Telangana passed.

The support of the Congress and the BJP was sufficient, no matter what the Left parties did. And the BJP's stand was made clear by an MP from Orissa, who in the course of his speech on the Council Bill, sought to know from the Centre when it would introduce the bill on Telangana.

Referring to CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury's remarks that the party was committed to reorganisation of States on linguistic basis, he asked if the introduction of question papers in the Bodo, Mythali and Santhali languages for the Civil Services Examinations from 2006 called for separation of Assam and Bihar where they were in vogue.

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