The controversial Telangana issue was raised in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday with Leader of the Opposition in the House Sushma Swaraj urging the government to introduce a Bill in the current session of Parliament for creation of a separate State.
The former Bharatiya Janata Party president and party MP, Rajnath Singh, said the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance were supporting Telangana, and the party had even passed a resolution in this regard at its national executive.
“The creation of Telangana is the long aspiration of the people of the region and the party will support their cause,” Mr. Singh added.
He wondered what happened to the report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee, which went into the issue, adding that Leader of the House and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee should explain what the government had done so far on the report and what it intended to do further.
Referring to the raising of pro-Telangana slogans by Congress members during President Pratibha Patil's address to the joint session of Parliament on Monday, Mr. Singh said this was the first time members of the Treasury benches were indulging in such an act against their own government, that too during the President's address when they should have maintained decorum. He condemned the behaviour of the Congress MPs and termed it an “insignificant act.”
Earlier in the day, many MPs, including Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K. Chandrasekhara Rao, and Congress members from the Telangana region Ponnam Prabhakar and Manda Jagannath, unsuccessfully tried to raise the issue.
Speaker Meira Kumar told the TRS leader that he would be given time during zero hour.
