Lok Sabha rocked

Ramesh said life had ground to a halt in 13 districts of Seemandhra region. The government did not bother to find out what the people wanted to say. He advised the Union Ministers to at least visit the areas after the conclusion of the monsoon session of parliament and to find out what the people wanted. Congress president Sonia Gandhi talked of a government panel but now the government was signalling that the process of creating Telangana was being hastened. He demanded an all-party committee being set up to look into the issue.

Naresh Aggarwal (SP) supported Ramesh, opposing the decision on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh. In the Lok Sabha, when V Arun Kumar (Cong) raised the issue, he was stoutly opposed by the Telangana Congress MPs. Arun Kumar said, “I would like to bring to the notice of this august House what is happening in Andhra Pradesh – Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. For the last more than 30 days the entire human life is paralysed, no offices are functioning, no shops are opening and no schools are functioning. Everything is paralysed.”

Going back 41 years, he said, when in 1972 there was a similar agitation in the same area, he, as an 18-year-old student, was detained for more than a month in the central jail for having participated in an agitation asking for a separate state. Now the situation was different. People in the Seemandhra region were seeking continuation of united Andhra Pradesh. Explaining the context of the situation when Jai Andhra Movement was launched, he said in 1972, the Supreme Court had said that Mulki Rules were valid.

Immediately, people in the Rayalaseema and Andhra areas felt they could not live in their own capital as second-class citizens because Mulki was for the natives and the capital was for the entire state. “We asked for a separate state. We did not raise any demand on capital or anything else. We just said, please give us another state, we will go away,” he said. After the biggest agitation of 108 days, Indira Gandhi raised it in this very same House in her capacity as the Prime Minister and said. “Parliament represents the will of the whole nation. Its duty is not merely to go into the rights and wrongs of a situation, but also to view problems from the national point of view.”

At this point, the Telangana Congress MPs caused a ruckus in the House and Arun Kumar’s voice was drowned in the din. Then Speaker Meira Kumar cut short V Arun Kumar and moved over to another MP, T R Baalu. On the other hand the TDP MPs who were suspended from Lok Sabha led by MP Sivaprasad staged a novel protest in front of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the premises of Lok Sabha.