Andhra assembly humiliates Congress, rejects Telangana bill The Congress-dominated state assembly on Thursday rejected the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Bill, 2103, brutally exposing the shrinking authority of the Congress leadership and raising for it the cost of the political gambit on Telangana. The outcome of the voice vote on the resolution moved by chief minister-turned- rebel Kiran Kumar Reddy to oppose the central bill was not surprising. The 159 Seemandhra MLAs, predictably, voted for the resolution while the 119 drawn from Telangana remained arrayed against it. It will not have any bearing on the decision on the Centre which, under the Constitution, has the final say in creation of new states. However, the UPA will still be required to muster sufficient numbers in Parliament: a requirement that will be hard to meet if its principal rival, the BJP, decides to pile on its agony by insisting that the Telangana bill be treated as a constitutional amendment bill. This will raise the bar to two-thirds in both Houses: a tough task at a time when UPA has lost the authority to rustle up the strength. But what made the voice vote an extraordinary political event was the en mass defiance of the Congress high commands diktat by MLAs who are still paid up members of the party. While the CM had already unfurled the flag of rebellion, sources said Speaker Nadenla Manohar too joined in the anti-Telangana show. Parliamentary affairs minister S Sailajanath, sources said, collaborated with Seemandhra MLAs belonging to the rival TDP to ensure that MLAs from Telangana were not able to disrupt passage of the CMs anti-partition resolution. Congress MPs from the Seemandhra region, sources said, were also involved in brokering the understanding with TDP. This is an embarrassment enough for Congress in a state which was crucial for its wins in two straight Lok Sabha polls. But it should rankle even more because of the growing fear that the expected gains from Telangana may not be there to compensate the losses the party is set to suffer in Seemandhra region. Although the Congress dismissed opinion polls predicting a debacle for it in the state as unreliable, senior party sources acknowledge off-the-record that the trend more or less tallies with their own feedback that they may not end up as the sole beneficiary of the thanksgiving vote in the Telangana region. Party strategists reckoned that the decision to create Telangana would help them benefit at the expense of Telangana Rasthra Samiti. The trajectory drawn by psephologists suggest that the calculation may not come to pass, at least not in full. The disappointment will deepen if the BJP insists that the reorganization bill be treated as a legislation aimed at amending the Constitution. The BJP has been among the original Telangana enthusiasts, and will be seen as obstructing statehood for a region where it has pockets of influence. However, it is under pressure from its likely ally N Chandrababu Naidu of Telugu Desam Party to calibrate its enthusiasm at least until Lok Sabha elections. Naidu has see-sawed over Telangana to settle for a position which opposes the central move without rejecting statehood for Telangana. BJP has not announced its stand yet. Sources said with trends suggesting that it can get handsome returns from the state in partnership with Naidu, it may get tempted to nuance its position. The view that creation of Telangana will require rewriting Article 371D of the Constitution to ensure that people from the region continue to avail of preferential treatment they are guaranteed under the provision, is seen as legitimate. BJP can cite this to insist that the reorganization bill should clear the test prescribed for constitutional amendment bills if only to avert the delay likely to result from legal challenges on the ground of procedural infirmity. Congress seems keen to ensure passage of the bill so that it can retrieve something from the remnants of its decade-long domination of power in the state with 42 Lok Sabha seats. However, sources concede that they cannot do much if the BJP insists on playing by the rule book and because of successful lobbying of smaller parties by both Naidu and Jaganmohan Reddy of YSR Congress. As a matter of fact, the activism during the last 10 sittings of the current Lok Sabha may only mark the party as the villain in Seemandhra without gains in Andhra Pradesh. Coming at a time when we are struggling to persuade DMK to revive the tie-up, and when our prospects are headed southwards in other states, the rejection of the bill in Hyderabad is disturbing and not merely for reasons of vanity, said a Congress source.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:16:08 +0000
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