Hyderabad: After the recent merger of four Telugu Desam Rajya Sabha members in the BJP, political parties in the Telugu states were forced to support the revocation of Article 370 as they feared the BJP could split their parties.
By supporting the government’s decision on Article 370, the TRS, YSRC and the Telugu Desam have compromised their political advantage.
The TRS had demanded the scrapping of Article 370 a long time ago. But that was when the party did not have cordial relations with the MIM. After Telangana state was formed, the TRS and the MIM have become close. The MIM is impla-cably opposed to the scrapping of Article 370.
To satisfy the BJP and MIM leaderships in the Rajya Sabha, the TRS supported the bill introduced by the Union government on Monday in the Rajya Sabha, but did not participate in the debate. The BJP requires the support of other parties in the Rajya Sabha where it does not have a majority, but needs no support from other parties in the Lok Sabha where it enjoys majority.
There are two versions in the TRS circles about the reason for TRS MPs keeping silent in the Rajya Sabha. According to one version, there were no directions from the party leadership to participate in the debate.
The second version is that the party leadership did ask their floor leader K. Keshava Rao to speak in the Upper House but he was not interested in speaking on this subject.
Political pundits say the YSRC has made a political blunder and fallen into the BJP trap. The BJP led central government has indicated that it is not interested in granting special status to any state and has reinforced this by scrapping Article 370 which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Political commentators say that the YSRC has been silenced on its demand for special status for AP when it supported the scrapping of Article 370. The central government could legitimately ask how the party which supported the scrapping of Article 370 giving special status to J&K can demand it be given to AP.
Meanwhile, the Telugu Desam, which has opposed the BJP consistently, also supported the scrapping of Article 370. By doing this it may have lost the right to attack the YSRC and corner it on the special status issue. If the TD had opposed it, it could have questioned the YSRC on how it expected to get special status for AP.
