TRS unimpressed with one-month deadline

NEW DELHI: Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s announcement of a one-month timeframe for the government to decide on statehood for Telangana failed to impress the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which expressed “disappointment” with the all-party meeting.
TRS chief K Chandrasekhara Rao slammed the “continued ambivalence of Congress, TDP and YSR Congress” on the issue. “I am totally disappointed...the government is not serious about creating Telangana. I feel this assurance of a decision in a month is just humbug,” Rao told TOI after emerging from the meeting.
The party has decided to protest against the refusal of Congress and others to spell out their stand on statehood as well as the government's indecision by calling for a Telangana bandh on Saturday. The party will announce its future course of action after consulting its representatives in a day or two.
Shinde’s announcement had come on a day when TDP shed its ambivalence on the issue and openly backed the demand for a separate state. This has complicated matters for the Congress, which will have to move at breakneck speed to keep up with the month’s deadline.
The all-party meeting -- attended by two representatives each of Congress, TRS, TDP, Jaganmohan Reddy's YSR Congress, BJP, CPI, CPM and AIMIM, besides Andhra chief minister N Kiran Reddy – saw the BJP, TRS, CPI and TDP solidly backing creation of a separate state. Though CPM rooted for a united Andhra Pradesh, it sought an early decision from the government and said Parliament could take a call.
YSR Congress refused to spell out its stand, but said it would go by the government’s decision on the issue. AIMIM, which also favoured a united Andhra Pradesh, said if a separate state was to be created, it should comprise both the Rayalaseema and Telangana regions and have Hyderabad as its capital. It opposed making Hyderabad a Union Territory.
Chairman of the joint action committee (JAC) agitating for Telangana, Prof Kodandaram, said he was dissatisfied with the meeting’s outcome as people of the region had expected the government to take a clear stand. “We are not sure that the government will honour its assurance of a decision in one month, as many promises were broken earlier,” he told TOI.
Telangana supporters’ apprehensions regarding an early decision are understandable given that the Congress was a sharply divided house at Friday’s all-party meet. While the pro-Telangana representative K R Suresh Reddy opened the discussions by rooting for statehood, G Venkat Reddy, who was the last to speak, insisted on keeping Andhra united, while conceding that he would ultimately go by the decision of the party high command.
While the TRS, BJP and CPI supported creation of Telangana at the all-party meet, the TDP – which until now was ambivalent – firmed up its stand and reiterated the stand it had taken in a 2008 letter to Pranab Mukherjee, favouring a separate state of Telangana.
Then home minister P Chidambaram had announced on December 9, 2009, that the process for formation of Telangana state was being initiated, leading to widespread protests in Andhra Pradesh. The decision was put in abeyance and Justice Srikrishna committee set up to examine the issue. The panel submitted its report in December 2010, followed by an all-party meeting chaired by then home minister Chidambaram in January 2011. The meeting was inconclusive.