Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Pro Telangana students meet intellectuals, curse Congress in Delhi

New Delhi, Jan 6: Members of the Telangana Students Joint Action Committee came to Delhi to urge leaders to boycott the release of the Srikrishna Committee report. They also met students and intellectuals to support a separate state. They were hosted by Congressman V. Hanumantha Rao, Rajya Sabha MP from Andhra Pradesh.

J. Ramesh Babu, of Hyderabad’s Osmania University, said the region’s youth given up on political parties to achieve Telangana. He dubbed the Srikrishna report as a betrayal of the people by Sonia Gandhi. It was on her birthday, on December 9, 2009, did home minister P. Chidambaram announce the initiation of the formation of Telangana.

After a meeting with BJP leaders Shahnawaz Hussain and Anurag Thakur, the students burnt an effigy of Sonia and a copy of the report in front of the AICC hadquarters. Hussain promised that the first bill his government would pass, if they won the parliamentary elections, would be that of forming Telangana.

Since they were refused entry into the premises, they left their memorandum with the security. “We have nothing to do Congress from now on,” said Babu. The activists were further angered as rumours of 3 students getting hit by police rubber bullets, in Osmania University, reached them.

His views were echoed by social activist Swami Agnivesh, who told the students to confine the report to the dustbin. “It’s a cruel joke on the people. All those who testified before Srikrishna feel betrayed,” he added.

On the swami’s suggestion that Telangana Rashtra Samiti was the most credible party in the region, student activist Rajesh told him that the party hadn’t taken a single concrete step to solve even the day to day problems of the people.

Rajesh is from the Backward Caste Students Federation of Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, in coastal Andhra. Politicians from the region have a firm stand against bifurcation. Yet a large proportion of the students came from outside Telangana.

“Ambedkar said that smaller states would strengthen the depressed classed. Only politicians and capitalists want a united Andhra,” said Y. Vasudeva from Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, in the state’s Rayalaseema region.

He added that they expect trouble from their classmates, for their support for bifurcation, when they return. “We would still flock to Hyderabad’s superior colleges, but they deserve a separate state,” said Vasudeva.

The activists appeared in front of TV cameras near the home ministry, at North Block, where the report was released. The held up placards and shouted slogans despite prohibitory orders in the area. None of them were arrested.

A public meeting by Telangana supporters is scheduled in Jawaharlal Nehru University tomorrow. Activists say they want to rope in dissent icon Arundhati Roy too. Many far- left student outfits too, in the city, are supporting the agitation.

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