JOIN US The New Year is likely to bring an ad hoc treatment to the festering wounds of Telangana.
Facing political heat over the four-decade-old demand for a separate state, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre is said to be actively considering constituting an autonomous Telangana Regional Council, on the lines of Darjeeling Hill Council, to put an end to the political uncertainty in Andhra Pradesh.
“Given the bitter regional divide in the state over the Telangana issue, the central leadership is veering round to the view that a middle path will be an ideal option. The current thinking is in favour of adopting the Darjeeling model to resolve the Telangana imbroglio,” highly placed sources in Congress said.
Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who chaired an all-party meeting on Telangana in Delhi on December 28, had announced that the Centre would take a decision within a month on the demand for separate Telangana state.
Though Shinde declined to specify the contours of the road map ahead, the Congress sources say that creation of an autonomous Telangana Council, coupled with an attractive financial package for the region, was under active consideration.
“We hope this ad hoc arrangement will address the concerns of the region. The proposed council will have adequate powers to prioritise developmental works in the region,” the sources said.
Though the Telangana protagonists within the ruling party and outside have made it clear that nothing short of a separate state, with Hyderabad as the capital, will satisfy them, the UPA leadership is hopeful of bringing them on board.
However, aware of the strong undercurrent of statehood sentiment across Telangana, the Centre will, however, promise to continue its efforts to achieve political consensus on the demand for separate state. The ruling party will cite lack of consensus as the reason for not granting the statehood at this juncture.
The Congress leadership is wary of dividing the state as it might trigger similar demands from various regions across the country, a prospect that could spell political disaster for the ruling party ahead of the 2014 general election.