After the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too on Sunday openly criticised the Centre’s “irrational” move to carve out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh and stated that the government would have to face the music for this “irrational decision”.
“The government will have to pay the price for any irrational decision,” said NCP chief and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. He was delivering the concluding address at the party’s day-long national convention here. He also said the NCP favoured setting up the second State Reorganisation Commission to ensure pragmatic decisions on demands of smaller states.
The political resolution that the NCP adopted at the convention too was critical of the Centre’s handling of the situation in the wake of the fast-unto-death stir of Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K Chandrasekhara Rao.
With dissent simmering within the party itself and a consensus eluding, the ruling Congress has over the past week been trying to find a way to slow down the process again in order to buy time and wriggle itself out of the tricky political situation in Andhra Pradesh.
Pawar had on December 15 last joined the Railways Minister and All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee to criticise the Government’s hasty move on Telangana in a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Noting that the announcement of the Centre agreeing to the creation of a separate Telangana had led to a political crisis, the NCP in its resolution said the Union Government’s stand had inspired “more and more people” to demand formation of new states. The party said it did not agree to the approach of making decisions on such critical issues “in a haphazard manner”.
