A convention is being organised here on November 1 the day in 1956 when the nine Telangana districts were merged with the then 11 districts of Andhra State to form Andhra Pradesh to decide on the mode of agitation to be launched to get statehood for Telangana.
An influential committee, comprising mostly of senior Congressmen from Telangana, has been formed to organise the November 1 convention. The committee will meet here on October 27 to chalk out the programme.
According to K Prabhakar Reddy, former home minister and chairman of the Telangana Sangarsh Samithi (TSS) which has taken the initiative to revive the separation demand, only a separate Telangana could meet the aspirations of the people of the backward region.
He alleged that successive chief ministers, who invariably belonged to the Andhra region, had neglected the development of Telangana.
Reddy gave the instance of the state expending over Rs 2,000 crore to carry drinking water to Chennai city while failing to ground any scheme for drawing Krishna waters to augment the drinking water requirement of Hyderabad city.
He said at the November 1 convention, specific instances of how Telangana has been neglected in the past decades in all spheres of development irrigation, drinking water, education, health and sanitation, agriculture etc. would be discussed.
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The first States Reorganisation Commission, in its report in 1954-55 favoured a separate Telangana state on the ground that the region will be unequally placed if merged with Andhra and that Telangana will be converted into a colony by the more enterprising Andhra people.
Though several safeguards were promised to the Telangana region, these were not strictly adhered to resulting in a separation movement in 1969-71. The movement was politically tackled by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi and it fizzled out.
Soon after P V Narasimha Rao became the Prime Minister, the legislators from Telangana, cutting across party lines, formed the Telangana Legislative Forum and submitted a memorandum (see chart).
The Centre has not so far acted on the representation.