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GoM nod for Royala Telangana
Highlights
GoM Nod for RT, Rayala Telangana, GoM Report of 69 Pages. Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said that the GoM would meet again at 8 pm on Wednesday to work out the nitty-gritty.
- To divide State equally with 147 MLAs and 21 MPs seats each
- Besides KCR, move to undercut growing influence of YSRCP and TDP
- Final sitting this evening
New Delhi: If the Congress party manages to have its way, Rayala Telangana will be the 29th state of India. The GoM which met for one-and-a-half hours on Tuesday reportedly decided to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh equally, with each State accounting for 147 MLAs and 21 MP seats. The GoM report of 69 pages, along with the Telangana Bill, will now be approved by the Cabinet on Thursday before being sent to the President and thereafter to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly for its consideration. The Assembly is slated to meet on December 12.
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said that the GoM would meet again at 8 pm on Wednesday to work out the nitty-gritty. Shinde and Jairam Ramesh held discussions with Union Ministers from Seemandhra, M M Pallam Raju, K S Rao and J D Seelam, after the GoM meeting was over. They were briefed on the GoM decision on Rayala Telangana.
Going beyond the CWC resolution which specified only 10 districts as part of Telangana, the GoM has decided to include two more districts of Kurnool and Anantapur, too, in the new state, making the distribution equal. But more than the division and meeting the six-decades-old demand of the Telangana region, it is the political consideration that has weighed more with the Group of Ministers, who are only focused on winning the ensuing 2014 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
Interestingly, when the CWC finalized the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, it had high hopes of bringing TRS supremo K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR)into the Congress-fold but when the latter turned his shoulder against the Congress, the GoM decided to look the other way. In fact, it was due to the TRS Chief that the Centre had hastened the process of forming the new State of Telangana by convening the Cabinet meeting on October 3, hoping that the merger of TRS, will give fillip to the political fortunes of the Congress in the Telangana region. With the merger not materializing, the UPA government chose to chart its own course that could give the Congress political advantage over others.
Besides, KCR, the GoM has also tried to undercut the growing influence of its political rivals in the state that includes TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu and YSRCP president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy in the Seemandhra region. The inclusion of two districts of Rayalaseema in Telangana will reduce considerably the Reddy domination in the residuary state of AP. Moreover, since Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy also hails from Seemandhra, the Centre expects that the move will also silence him.
With the equal number of MLAs in the two prospective States, the Centre hopes that the Bill will be cleared in the Assembly without much hue and cry. The Chief Minister, all this while, had threatened the Congress High Command of creating hurdles in the passage of the Bill in the Assembly. The GoM is confident that the Bill after being cleared would be brought to Parliament in the Winter Session itself.
The GoM report, vetted by all the members, is being fine-tuned with all its salient features being incorporated in the Telangana Bill. At the GoM meeting on Tuesday, all the Ministers were confident that the Bill would turn the tide in their favour in the State and would bring them victory in the 2014 polls. With the 28 Assembly seats in the two Rayalseema districts added to Telangana, the TRS will be put to disadvantage, even as Jagan and Chandrababu Naidu will lose half of their home turf of Rayalaseema.
Significantly, all the GoM members are politically motivated. They include Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Defence Minister A K Antony, who are all the members of Congress Core Group. Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh are known for their political acumen.
Only, Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily and Minister of State for Personnel and PMO V Narayansamy are known to toe the line of their seniors. All of them after holding series of meetings with the representatives of all the three regions besides holding all party meetings, have finally come out with a political “master-stroke” that they feel will “stun” their political rivals.
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