Hyderabad: With hardly three days left for the Union Cabinet to formally approve the Telangana Bill, which is ready, the signals emanating from the central leadership of the Congress on the Rayala Telangana proposal has created fresh confusion.
The pro-Telangana parties such as the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the BJP have said they will oppose the Rayala Telangana proposal tooth and nail. The Telangana Joint Action Committee even threatened to launch a fresh stir against the proposal.
There are reports from Delhi that Congress president Sonia Gandhi, having given the green signal to the Telangana draft bill in the Congress Core Committee meeting on Friday, favours Rayala Telangana (Telangana plus Kurnool and Anantapur districts) and has asked some members of the Group of Ministers that drafted the bill, to work on this.
Though Union minister S. Jaipal Reddy has denied that the proposal is being entertained, Deputy Chief Minister Damodar Raja Narasimha who was in Delhi recently, told newsmen that he was asked by Union minister Jairam Ramesh specifically about the Rayala Telangana proposal. Coming from someone like the Deputy Chief Minister has made Telangana leaders sit up and take notice. For the record, Narasimha rejected the Rayala Telangana proposal, but he is reportedly under pressure to accept it now.
Telangana leaders are appalled that any new proposal should be entertained at this late stage. TRS senior leader B.Vinod Kumar said he too has got information from Delhi that the Congress is mulling over the Rayala Telangana proposal. “We are going to oppose the Rayala Telangana proposal. There is no question of accepting it,”?he said.
BJP senior leader Ch. Vidyasagar Rao, said that if the Congress changes its stand in favour of Rayala Telangana, the BJP will not support the Bill either in the Assembly or in Parliament.
Adding to the confusion, the meeting of GoM member and Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad with Congress president on Saturday gains significance as he was the author of the Rayala Telangana proposal.
