Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday demanded that the United Progressive Alliance government pilot a bill on Telangana in Parliament, vowing the support of its members for the cause.
Addressing a public meeting here, called ‘Telangana Poru' to mark the BJP's struggle for a separate State, Mr. Gadkari said: “The Srikrishna Committee is just a time-pass committee. Only a bill will see Telangana materialise.”
This was the first in a series of meetings to be held in the backward region over the next few days, he noted.
Mr. Gadkari said the National Democratic Alliance would relocate irrigation from the State list to the concurrent list if it came to power after the next elections. This would ensure Central funds for many irrigation projects, he said. Irrigation was high on the NDA's agenda, and shifting the subject to the concurrent list would be the first task when it returned to power. “All the projects will be given 50 per cent funding from the Centre.”
Mr. Gadkari was highly critical of the Congress and Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram for deploying paramilitary forces in Andhra Pradesh in view of the Telangana agitation.
“While the government does not deploy sufficient forces to protect borders, it sends paramilitary to suppress a democratic struggle,” he said.
BJP's Andhra Pradesh unit president G. Kishan Reddy demanded that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N. Chandrababu Naidu clearly state their stand on Telangana.
Senior leaders Bandaru Dattatreya and Ch. Vidyasagar Rao predicted a political trauma in the State after January 6 in which TDP would be washed out.
Telangana Joint Action Committee chairman M. Kodandaram and Telangana Non-Gazetted Officers Union president Swamy Goud attended the meeting, among others.
