Amid reports that the Centre is planning to announce the creation of a Rayala-Telangana State by including Kurnool and Anantapur districts from Rayalaseema with 10 Telangana districts, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) has outright rejected the move.
“Definitely we will not accept [Rayala-Telangana], it is not our demand. Our demand is that a separate Telangana [State] be formed with its 10 districts and Hyderabad as capital,” TRS MLA from Sircilla and general secretary K.T. Rama Rao told The Hindu on Friday.
Mr. Rao, son of TRS president K. Chandrasekhara Rao, said: “We don’t understand where such proposal is coming from.” The TRS would not trust the Congress and the UPA-II government on the Telangana issue.
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“We won’t believe [them] unless the Telangana Bill is placed before Parliament and the government/Congress ensures that it is passed and the new State is carved out.” Mr. Rao also rejected any move to declare Hyderabad a Union Territory. Hyderabad, he said, was part and parcel of Telangana. “We will not compromise on this.” When there were demands in the country to declare Delhi and Puducherry (both Union Territories) States, where was the need to separate Hyderabad from Telangana?
Intelligence warning
Meanwhile, informed sources said the intelligence agencies, from both the State and the Centre, have warned the UPA government to tread cautiously on the Telangana issue as any decision to divide the non-Hindi-speaking State which had already been carved out on a linguistic basis — Telugu — would set a bad precedent. It would pave the way for more demands like separate Gorkhaland, Bundlekhand, Vidarbha and Coorg States. Also, there could be law and order problems in Seemandhra if the new State demand was accepted.
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