Telangana demand cannot be sidelined: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday scoffed at the six options given by the Justice Srikrishna Commission in its Report on the situation in Andhra Pradesh and said that even if there were 60 options, the demand of Telangana could not be sidelined.

While the BJP’s national-level leaders blamed the Congress-led UPA government of being irresponsible and harming the state’s interests by delaying the formation of Telangana, the BJP state unit leadership said that nothing short of a separate state would appease Telanganaites.

BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain told media persons in New Delhi that the Congress had adopted a ‘childish’ approach to the demand of a separate state and this is harming the Andhra Pradesh as a whole. The only way forward is to bifurcate the state at the earliest, Mr Hussain said.

Hinting that the Centre was in collusion with the Srikrishna Commission, Mr Hussain said that the Report is evidence of the delaying tactics being adopted by the Centre on the contentious issue.

Meanwhile in Hyderabad, senior party leader Venkaiah Naidu, along with G Kishen Reddy, Bandaru Dattatreya, N Ramchander Rao told reporters at the party office that the issue was political and should be solved through political means.

Mr Venkaiah Naidu also said that the BJP will not accept the recommendations or the options given by the Panel since it had never recognised its validity.

The senior leader also criticised the Congress of going back on its election manifesto of 2004, in which it had stated that it would carve out a separate Telangana state.

The BJP leaders also pledged support to any Bill on separate statehood if introduced in Parliament, since it believed that development of smaller states would be far more expeditious.