Badly mauled by the Telangana people in the recently concluded bypolls, the Telugu Desam party is planning to revise its stand on statehood issue. The party is likely to give another letter to the central government stating that it is not against creation of a separate Telangana state.
It is not clear yet whether it will send the Centre a copy of its Politburo resolution or draft another letter afresh.
Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu met Telangana leaders at his residence on Friday to discuss the spate of suicides by youths, party’s position and the electoral defeats in the region.
“The TDP chief is positive about the Telangana sentiment. We requested him to send a letter again in favour of Telangana to the Union government. He considered our demand,” said Telangana Telugu Desam Forum convenor E Dayakar Rao later.
“We had our first meeting today. We will have two or three more meetings in the coming days,” Naidu said while not disclosing what he actually intended to do when bypolls for 18 Assembly seats in Andhra region are due. But analysts are wondering why Naidu suddenly turned his attention to Telangana instead of to the coming byelections. They think that Naidu has sensed that the Centre will make a statement on Telangana very soon.
Hence the quick movement of pawns by him to win over Telangana people.
The TDP Politburo had adopted a resolution in October 2008 favouring statehood to Telangana. It promised to extend all the help needed for creation of a new state by constitutional or legislative process.
It also made it clear that it would vote in favour if a bill was introduced in Parliament on state’s division. But Chidambaram’s statement on December 9, 2009 made Naidu take a U-turn on Telangana and adopt a vague “two eye” policy at the risk of becoming a suspect in the eyes of Telangana people. He turned down Telangana activists’ demand that the TDP send another letter to the Centre favouring division of the state.
His argument was that the party had already forwarded a copy of its resolution to the Pranab Mukherjee committee and there was no need for another letter. [Express News Service]