The Hindu : Front Page : NTP all set to merge with PR

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Thursday, Feb 26, 2009
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NTP all set to merge with PR

Formal announcement after Devender Goud meets Chiranjeevi

— PHOTO: Satish. H

POLITICAL GAMBLE: NTP president T. Devender Goud addressing his party members in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

HYDERABAD: Seven months after he broke away from the Telugu Desam Party, T. Devender Goud is all set to merge his new outfit, Nava Telangana Party, with Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam.

An emergency meeting of NTP’s State executive committee is learnt to have endorsed Mr. Goud’s proposal for merger with PR on the premise that it was the only political party to acknowledge the demand for separate Telangana. A formal announcement on the merger is likely to be made shortly after Mr. Goud holds discussions with Mr. Chiranjeevi.

The move, claimed by Mr. Goud as an effort to “keep the planks of social justice and separate Telangana alive”, is seen as a reaction to the lukewarm response the NTP evoked from the protagonists of separation.

After resigning from the TDP on June 23 and announcing the formation of his own party on July 11, Mr. Goud pinned hopes on some of his erstwhile TDP colleagues from the region joining his bandwagon. But this did not happen as the TDP itself changed its avowed stand on the united State. Mr. Goud made no effort to conceal his feelings when he claimed: “The party leadership which never spoke about separate statehood has taken a stand on Telangana after my resignation.”

The NTP president took pains to explain how his party’s initiatives to bring together all the Telangana forces went in vain and how Telangana Rashtra Samiti had become a “pawn in the Congress gamble to hoodwink the people”. Since the TRS had now joined the grand alliance led by the TDP and the Congress “continuing to cheat the people of Telangana”, the NTP had decided to “strengthen the hands of the PR”.

Costly affair

Mr. Goud justified his decision to align with the PR on the ground that no party was in a position to go it alone in the elections that “have become a costly affair now”. He, however, asked the State executive committee to evaluate the situation and announce its decision.

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