HYDERABAD: Stepping up pressure, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti has fixed August 15 as yet another deadline for the Congress high command to come out with a policy statement on Telangana failing which it has threatened to launch a mass movement.

"Two years is too long a period for us to wait for the Congress to spell out its stand on separate Telangana," TRS president K. Chandrasekhara Rao said at a press conference here on Wednesday along with his party colleague A. Narendra.

"There is a limit to patience and the TRS has maintained strategic silence expecting that the Congress will respond," he said, and maintained that the time had come for the people of the region to gear up for the "final and decisive struggle" for a separate State.

`Consensus reached'

Claiming that consensus had been reached on the Telangana issue, Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao said more than 450 MPs had extended their written support for the separate State. "Prolonging the process is not correct," he said, and wanted the Congress to bring the issue to its logical end.

He made it clear that the TRS would not wait beyond August 15, and hoped that the Congress would fulfil its commitment. AICC president Sonia Gandhi had never spoken against Telangana and the TRS would directly consult the Congress high command.

Maintaining that the scene would now shift to New Delhi, Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao said he would stay put in Telangana and wait for the Congress party's response after August 12. He declined to divulge the course of action his party would adopt if the Congress refused to commit itself on Telangana.

The TRS chief lashed out at Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, whose `step- motherly' attitude towards Telangana was proved when he said that more lift irrigation schemes rather than full-fledged projects would be taken up in the region.

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