Centre’s T word by Sept. 30: KCR

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Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrasekhar Rao is confident that the five-decade-long Telangana issue will be decided by the end of this month. He, however, gave no reasons for his optimism. “The Telangana issue will be solved this month. There should not be any doubt,” he said before leaving for New Delhi on Wednesday.

Mr Rao did not rule out discussions with the Centre on the Telangana issue while he was in New Delhi. Asked whether he had got a call from the Centre, the TRS chief merely said that there was scope for discussions with the central leaders. “Anything is possible when I am there,” he said. He was going mainly for the closing session of Parliament, he said. Mr Rao has not commented on his meeting with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh a couple of months ago, where the PM reportedly said that there should be peace and tranquillity in the state for the Centre to take a decision on Telangana.

Nothing came of this and so August 20 was set as the deadline for the issue to be resolved. Since then there has been no word from Mr Rao who has not yet spelt out his party’s stand on the Telangana Joint Action Committee’s Telangana March scheduled for September 30. Sources in the TRS said that Mr Rao has immense faith in UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and doesn’t want to antagonise them at this crucial juncture. Mr Rao has also spurned the offer of a “package” on Telangana and insisted that bifurcation is the only solution, said the source. “For some reason, he still believes Congress will give Telangana and Sonia Gandhi will keep her promise.”