Everybody was aware that former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy was a man of great political foresight.
He used to call shots at the Congress high command on any issue pertaining to erstwhile Andhra Pradesh and the party leadership used to give a lot of weight to his words.
Since 2004, Congress president Sonia Gandhi was hell-bent on granting statehood to Telangana by dividing united AP.
She had a lot of soft corner towards the people of Telangana and she used to give a lot of importance to Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao.
However, she could not take any decision on the Telangana formation only because of strong resistance from YSR.
Right from the day one, he used to put spokes on the proposal on Telangana, stating that it would prove detrimental to the Congress party down south.
This was disclosed by none other than Sanjay Baru, media advisor to then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at a media interaction on Friday night.
He said before 2009 elections, Sonia wanted to grant statehood to Telangana, since all the parties including the Telugu Desam Party had given letters in support of bifurcation to the Pranab Mukherjee committee.
“However, YSR, in a meeting with Manmohan and Sonia, strongly opposed the move. I was present in that meeting. He categorically told them that if the Telangana is separated, the Congress would lose in both the Telugu States. In Telangana, the credit will go to the TRS and people would vote it to power. And in AP, the people would outright reject the Congress, which would not get a single seat. So, they had to choose between Telangana and the survival of the Congress,” Baru quoted YSR as saying.
So, as long as YSR was alive, Sonia could not overrule his argument. It was only after YSR’s death that she could dare take a decision on bifurcation.
Rest is history and the Congress is buried in both the States. That was YSR’s vision!
