Telugu Desam Party district president and Mylavaram MLA Devineni Umamaheswara Rao expressed regret that the decision to carve Telangana was approved by the Union Cabinet in utter disregard to the apprehensions of people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, who have been protesting against it for the last 65 days.
The Union Ministers pretended to be unaware of what the Cabinet note had in the offing for ‘Seemandhra’ and remained mute spectators to the sordid episode that unfolded the very moment the formal announcement to divide the State was made on July 30 by the Congress Working Committee (CWC). Addressing mediapersons here on Friday, Mr. Umamaheswara Rao said that the Central government despatched para-military forces to suppress the agitation in Seemandhra, while Vijayawada MP Lagadapati Rajagopal and others who are still trying to make people believe that ‘the battle is not lost’.
The Union Ministers and Members of Parliament could have brought the division of the State to a halt in its nascent stage by resigning en masse when the CWC’s decision came, but they stuck to their positions in return for contracts and other favours, he alleged.
‘People let down’
The Central Government would have collapsed in the event of their resignations and the present situation would not have cropped up, he said. The interests of people were sacrificed by the Congress whose intentions (behind bifurcation) were pretty clear, he said. Meanwhile, TDP leader K. Pattabhiram demanded that the Congress party take back its decision to divide the State and warned that it would pay a heavy price for doing so. In the morning, led by Mr. Pattabhiram, scores of TDP activists staged a ‘rail roko’ in protest against the bifurcation, and wished that good sense would prevail on those presiding over the destiny of the State. They stopped the Chennai-bound Corromandel Express for 10 minutes by squatting on the tracks at Vijayawada Railway Station.
