Congress backtracks on Rayala-Telangana plan
The Congress's malicious gameplan to exploit regional divides and further its vested interests through the creation of a Rayala-Telangana State has thankfully come a cropper. In the face of enormous public opposition and intense political lobbying, the Union Cabinet on Thursday had no choice but to disregard the Group of Ministers’ nefarious recommendation to add the two Rayalaseema districts of Kurnool and Anantapur to the new State. Instead, it approved a parliamentary Bill for the creation of the State in accordance with the original 10-district plan. The 12-district proposal had emerged out of the blue, and it reflected on the cynical politics of a party on its last legs. The proposal was designed to bring the Congress four benefits: First, it would split the anti-Telangana movement; second, it would weaken the Congress’s rival in the Rayalaseema region; third, it would favourably tilt the numbers in the Andhra Assembly, and fourth, it would avoid an electoral washout of the Congress in both Andhra Pradesh and the Telangana region. In the first case, the Congress was hoping that moving Kurnool and Anantapur into Telangana would convince local leaders, who have been strongly anti-bifurcation, to give up their opposition and fall in line in the hope of securing for themselves a better deal in the new State. Yet, there was never any guarantee that the leaders would switch sides. Telangana is an emotive issue that, for locals at least, goes beyond partisan politics. In the second case, taking away two districts from the four-district Rayalaseema area would have hobbled the region's main political party and Congress arch-rival YSR Congress. But on the flip side, it would have also given the party a hold in the new State where it would be pitted against the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Congress's main ally. Interestingly, even the TRS, having seen through the Congress's gameplan, had protested against the 12-district proposal, even though it would have meant access to additional territory for the party. In the third case, the Congress calculated that the current Andhra Assembly has 119 MlAs from Telangana region and 160 from the rest of the State, making a vote in favour of bifurcation near impossible (this wouldn’t have stopped the creation of Telangana but it looked really bad). However, if the 28 MlAs from Kurnool and Anantapur moved to the other side, then the score-board flips in favour of a ‘yes’ vote. In the fourth and final case, lok Sabha poll considerations came into play. The Congress had 33 seats from Andhra in 2009, but is now staring at a rout. Some political engineering with Rayala-Telangana could have perhaps helped.
Note how all these calculations have been based on dubious assumptions. Yet, the Congress was willing to gamble on these — thereby underlining its electoral desperation. In fact, the party is so worried that it was willing to short-circuit the discussion process on Telangana, setting a dangerous precedent. The Congress needed the proposal to be cleared before February 2014, when the Model Code of Conduct is likely to kick in. It wants the Bill passed in the Winter Session — and if it means that the State Assembly, Parliament and the President of India would be cut out of the deliberation process, then so be it!