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BJP chief reignites Telangana issue

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Our Regional Bureau Chennai/ Hyderabad
Last Updated : Feb 06 2013 | 6:31 AM IST
Bringing the issue of Telangana to the party's front burner, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh on Saturday extended his party's support to the demand for creation of a separate state of Telangana.
 
Rajnath Singh's strong message in favour of the separate statehood marked the change of power equations within the party following the change of guard at the national level on the contentious issue.
 
It also marked the TDP's parting ways with BJP on whose insistence the previous NDA government had distanced itself from the Telangana statehood, though the latter always supported the creation of small states.
 
Squarely blaming the UPA government for delaying the introduction of a bill making the way for the creation of a separate state in the Parliament during the past two years, the BJP president said the Congress betrayed the people of Telangana.
 
He said his party's future course of action on the issue of Telangana would be decided at the next national executive meeting to be held in May, 2006. The open support of the BJP president to the cause of a separate Telangana has TRS supremo and Union minister K Chandrasekhara Rao stepping up his campaign for a separate statehood within the UPA coalition. Replying to a question as to why the BJP did not clarify its stand despite the repeated assertion by UPA sub-committee chairman Pranab Mukherjee that he could not decide on the issue as the main Opposition party in Parliament was not responding, he said when the BJP president himself declared the party's support for Telangana state why someone needed the party's stand in writing.
 
Besides speaking about the alleged minority appeasement and also the loss of credibility of the UPA government in the backdrop of Volker's report, Singh sought to make the issue of rising prices a major political offensive.
 
"While the prices of cars are coming down, the essential commodities are becoming dearer. This alone exposes the Congress and the UPA government's pro-rich attitude," he said.

 
 

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First Published: Mar 20 2006 | 12:00 AM IST

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