Rahul Gandhi favouring AP at the cost of Telangana, says Harish

Not a day passes without TRS leaders bringing up Andhra factor in their campaign for December elections. They are making all kinds of allegations against Congress ahead of Rahul Gandhi’s visit on October 20 to address public meetings at Bhainsa near Adilabad, Kamareddy and Old City in Hyderabad.

The latest wild allegation comes from none other than TRS Minister T. Harish Rao. He says that Rahul Gandhi has promised Special Category Status to AP without making any such promises to extend similar package to Telangana. He further says that at the time of state division, the Manmohan government promised to extend tax incentives and industrial concessions to Telangana that would equal compared to benefits going to AP once special status is given.

KCR used to say that they were not against giving special status to AP. TRS Chief also used to say that they would ask for nothing else if they were given separate statehood. But once Telangana was formed, TRS leaders changed tactics and went on creating hurdles for the cause of compensating residual AP by raising objections to special status indirectly.

Harish Rao has some valid concerns that factories and industries will go away from Telangana and Hyderabad to AP if this special status is given and because of huge tax concessions that come with it. He must have forgotten the fact that Telangana state was formed with Hyderabad as its capital only to fulfil the demand of Telangana leaders and at the cost of Andhras. Thereby, sentiments of majority people from two other regions, namely Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, were hurt. Now TRS leaders have taken it up as their only role to create one problem after another for hurting AP’s interests very badly. AP’s leaders are not able to fight against this because of changed political scenario and Modi government at the Centre not ready to cooperate unless BJP is given a chance to strengthen its presence in the state.

Rahul Gandhi has already promised that he will put his first signature on AP special status file once Congress wins in 2019. Now TRS leaders say this is harmful for Telangana. There are early elections fast approaching there. Rahul has no choice but to come out with similar promises to Telangana now.

Seeing all this, AP people are realising that special packages will not come as long as the government at the Centre doesn’t cooperate for political reasons. It is more difficult to get special status as many other states will ask for the same.

It is clear from TRS party’s latest demand for a package on a par with special status that may be given in future to AP. In this game, nobody has anything to lose except AP people who are receiving one raw deal after another with no hope of justice in near future.

G. RaviKiran