KCR ups the ante for Telangana statehood

Union minister and TRS supremo K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) today asked the people of Telangana to be prepared for any eventuality as the campaign against the separate statehood demand had reached a "new high".

Brushing aside the statements of state Congress leaders over the issue of Telangana and the subsequent comments made by another TRS Union minister A Narendra against chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy as a trivial matter, the determined Rao said the issue of statehood would be sorted out between the AICC high command and the TRS soon after the Maharashtra elections.

"Sonia Gandhi and other AICC leaders have promised us on more than one occasion that they would take up the issue of the separate statehood to Telangana after the Maharashtra elections are over. Now it is a matter of only 15-20 days and we will then bring this matter up to the Congress high command soon after the elections. Though we are not bothered by the provocations of the local Congress leaders, we are seeing through the machinations of the anti-Telangana forces aimed at derailing the statehood demand," Chandrasekhara Rao said here on Monday.

Though KCR directed his criticism mainly against the statements made by certain coastal Andhra leaders on the division of the state, he was also indicative of the actual game plan being enacted in the name of the second States' Reorganisation Committee from its ally, the Congress in the state.

Asking the people of Telangana to prepare for any eventuality and to be ready to take up any form of struggle to achieve separate statehood, he has amply indicated about the things in store if the Congress leadership refuses to take steps for the creation of Telangana state without second SRC.

In another irritant in the troubled relations between both the Congress and the TRS, KCR also asked the state government to change the site for the proposed Pulichintala irrigation project, which is meant for the stabilisation of ayacut in the Krishna delta.

"If the project comes up at the south of the present site, the areas in Telangana that would be submerged would include not only the regions containing rich lime stone deposits but also the lands of tribals who were rehabilitated there on account of the construction of Nagarjuna Sagar in the 1960s," he said.

TRS will chalk out the future course of action if the government does not heed to their request, KCR said.