State will have 10 districts, Hyderabad to be common capital for 10 years
Moments after the Congress’s allies in the UPA Coordination Committee agreed on Tuesday evening to the division of Andhra Pradesh, the party’s Working Committee pronounced in a unanimous resolution that Telangana would be a reality.
Andhra Pradesh will probably be able to celebrate 57 years of its existence this November, before the curtains come down on it. But Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy did not wait for the announcement. After making a last ditch effort — as did other central ministers, Congress MPs and other leaders from Seemandhra to persuade the Congress leadership not to go through with the separation — he dashed back to Hyderabad to deal with the political fallout.
With threats of resignations coming in from Congress State ministers and MLAs from the Seemandhra region, a grim-faced party general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh Digvijaya Singh admitted, in response to a question, “Some issues are agitating the minds of people on both sides, and it is the responsibility of the Congress general secretary in charge and the State leadership to resolve them.”
The complicated process that will accompany the creation of what will be India’s 29th state, Mr. Singh said, will “take four to five months”. The Centre, he said, will send the CWC resolution to the State assembly for its approval, which would then be sent to the Union cabinet that will set up a Group of Ministers to address the issues of Telangana and Seemandhra: these will include the sharing of waters, revenue, land, power. After that, it would come back to the Cabinet, which would ask the Union law ministry to draft a bill that would be sent to the Andhra Assembly for its comments. Then the Union home ministry will make the adequate provisions, incorporating the suggestions.
Next, the draft bill, approved by the government, will be sent to the President, after which Parliament will have to pass the bill in both the houses by a simple majority. It will then be sent back to the President for notification.
Mr. Singh made it clear that the approval of the Andhra Assembly was not needed for the creation of Telangana. As for the provisions of Article 371 (D), he said the Union cabinet would have to examine whether its provisions would remain relevant after the creation of Telangana.
The 10 districts of Telangana will form the new State, while the remaining Andhra and Rayalaseema regions will together constitute Seemandhra. Hyderabad will be the common capital for the two states for 10 years, by which time Seemandhra is expected to build a new capital located within its geographical boundaries.
For the moment, the proposal to include two districts of Rayalaseema in Telangana has been put in cold storage; however, Mr. Singh, when asked a question on the subject, said that while for the moment the two districts would not be part of Telengana, over the next few months, those from the State who wanted them to be included could make a suggestion to the Group of Ministers that will be set up for consideration. The emphasis in the CWC resolution is that the creation of Telangana has been difficult, but that it comes after years of promises made by different leaders of the party from Union home minister P. Chidambaram to the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, as well as its mention in several party documents. Indeed, the resolution takes pains to stress that it is historical reasons rather than political expediency that has led the government to take this painful step.
Source : The Hindu