The Telugu Desam has said that its president N. Chandrababu Naidu and 43 other party MLAs from Seemandhra will vote against the Bill on separate Telangana whenever it is referred to the State Assembly.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, TDP MLAs B. Gopalakrishna Reddy and G. Muddukrishnama Naidu asked what right the Central government had to divide the State six months ahead of the general elections. They said there was no government worth the name in Seemandhra where the agitation against bifurcation of the State was more than 70 days old.
The demand for separate Telangana, including Hyderabad, was misplaced because no where in the country the existing State capital was conceded to the broken part.
This was the case even when the erstwhile Hyderabad State was trifurcated. Therefore, Hyderabad should remain with the parent State and, more so, because it was developed by the TDP which was committed to integrated State.
They admitted that the TDP gave a letter to the Central government conveying its willingness to separate Telangana in 2008 but recalled that the party went to polls in 2004 on the plank of integrated State.
Asked how fair it was on the part of Mr. Chandrababu Naidu to stage a hunger strike in A. P. Bhavan when the government led by him had prohibited such protests in the past, they said it was a different situation now. The TDP government at that time issued the order to check the vandalism of opposition Congress leaders.
