Hyderabad: A last-minute proposal to hand over two districts of the Rayalaseema region to Telangana to linearly bifurcate India’s fourth largest state has caught politicians in Andhra Pradesh by surprise and triggered resistance from both ruling and opposition parties in the state.
The group of ministers (GoM) tasked with finalising the terms of division of Andhra Pradesh, including delineating the state’s boundaries, is inclined in favour of adding Kurnool and Anantapur districts of Rayalaseema to the proposed Telangana state, reports from New Delhi have indicated.
Rayala-Telangana, as it’s being called, will cover the western part of the state and have 12 districts. The remaining two Rayalaseema districts, Chittoor and Kadapa, will join nine districts of coastal Andhra.
To be sure, there has been no public confirmation by members of the GoM on the Rayala-Telangana proposal.
That didn’t stop Andhra Pradesh’s deputy chief minister C. Damodar Raja Narasimha on Wednesday from writing a letter against the reported proposal to the GoM on behalf of his cabinet colleagues hailing from the Telangana region.
“We have clearly stated that there should be no deviation from the Congress Working Committee’s resolution. We want Telangana with 10 districts and Hyderabad as its capital,” the state’s panchayat raj minister K. Jana Reddy said at a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
The news has not gone down well with pro-Telangana outfits that have called for a shutdown protest in the region on Thursday.
“Who has asked for Rayala-Telangana? Where has it come from? We are totally opposed to it. We demanded only a separate Telangana state with 10 districts, with Hyderabad as its capital and without any restrictions on Hyderabad,”Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhara Rao, was cited as saying by PTI.
The Congress hopes to neutralize opposition parties, primarily the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) and TRS, by creating Rayala-Telangana, analysts say. Both the Telugu-speaking states, if divided according to the proposal, will have 21 parliamentary and 147 legislative constituencies each.
“The logical reason may be to marginalize the TRS. The Congress may have expected TRS to fall in line and merge with it,” said political analyst K. Nageshwar.
The TRS hasn’t shown much interest in aligning with the Congress—a commitment it made earlier in return for grant of statehood to Telangana. TRS has little or no presence in the two Rayalaseema districts and its influence in a new state could be kept under check— which seems to be the Congress leadership’s line of thinking, Nagshwar explained.
“It hopes to reduce the influence of YSR Congress to whatever extent possible,” Nageshwar said. Rayalaseema is a stronghold of Congress rebel Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is campaigning to keep Andhra Pradesh united by meeting leaders of various national parties.
“…splitting Rayalseema into two is irrational and impractical,” said Jagan Reddy, who heads the YSR Congress Party. “This shows the arrogance of Delhi which thinks that it can act according to its whims and fancies and people will remain mute spectators,” the member of Parliament from Kadapa constituency in Rayalaseema region, said, describing the move as a “conspiracy of Congress to scuttle united Andhra agitation”. (PTI)
