BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the UPA government’s decision to form a Telangana State just before the parliamentary elections smacked of “political opportunism.”
“They [the Congress] slept over the issue for nine-and-half years and just before the elections they made an announcement,” he said here. Mr. Naidu pointed out a “contradiction” between the claims of Congress leaders in the Telangana region and of those in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema.
While Telangana leaders claimed that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had agreed to the creation of a new State, leaders of the other two regions were saying that nothing had been finalised and that it was because of the BJP and the Telugu Desam Party that the Congress was compelled to make a statement on Telangana. Mr. Naidu dismissed a non-Congress, non-BJP “Federal Front” proposed by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee as a “mirage.”
ADVERTISEMENT