New Delhi/Hyderabad: Amid pandemonium and a television blackout of the proceedings, the Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed a bill to carve out a Telangana state out of Andhra Pradesh, triggering joy in the Telangana region and protests elsewhere in the Andhra Pradesh.
The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2014 was adopted by a voice after Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj lent support to it in a debate in which other opposition leaders had no say. The passage of the bill, after 90 minutes of ruckus through which the clause-by-clause amendments were piloted by Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, brings to fruition the process set in motion on the night of November 9, 2009 by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram. Opposition leaders questioned the black out of live television coverage and attacked Speaker Meira Kumar's decision, which was described by many as "unprecedented".
The Lok Sabha's decision was greeted with wild celebrations in Hyderabad, the nerve-centre of Telangana and the most sought after capital by the rival region of Seemandhra, where there were protests. Telangana supporters in Hyderabad and nine other districts of the region burst firecrackers and distributed sweets. Moments after the passage, YSR Congress chief Jaganmohan Reddy, who was suspended last week for disruptions in the House, declared an AP bandh on Wednesday calling the decision a "black day" for the country. Democracy has been killed in broad day light, he said. State Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, who belongs to Congress and has been resisting the division, may resign Wednesday and float a new party, according to a close aide of his in Hyderabad. Vijayawada MP L. Rajagopal, who had used pepper spray in Lok Sabha last week to protest tabling of the bill, announced that he is retiring from politics for failing to stop bifurcation.
In the light of last week's proceedings when Seemandhra MP L Rajagopal sprayed pepper and another MP broke mike 16 MPs were suspended. The bill was introduced in the House on February 13 amid unprecedented scenes marked by fisticuffs, pepper spraying and breaking of House articles. The suspended MPs could not attend the House on Tuesday. The MPs from Seemandhra, a region comprising coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema districts, have been attacking the Centre's move saying injustice was being done to them. The bill was being enacted in "undue haste" and that too in the last days of the 15th Lok Sabha, they contend.
Swaraj, who spoke as per an understanding with the government, said her party supports the creation of Telangana but attacked the way it was being done. "I and my party support the Bill...Telangana should be formed...We rise to prove our credibility and to see wishes of youth of Telangana are fulfilled," Swaraj said amid vociferous protest by members from CPI(M), Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress in the Well. Rejecting Kamal Nath's charge that BJP was playing a double game by supporting the bill and also calling it unconstitutional, she told the media later that the provision giving law and order powers to the Governor was "unconstitutional".
"You bring a Constitutional amendment and we will support. But a Constitutional provision was being brought in through an amendment in an ordinary law," she said. She said it was the Congress party which was playing a double game. Its own Chief Minister was staging a dharna in the state opposing the decision of the government at the Centre headed by his own prime minister, she said. Charging Congress with mishandling the issue of Telangana, she recalled that the BJP-led NDA had created three states during its tenure at the Centre without any disruption in Parliament or in any region.
Accusing the Congress of delaying the process of Telangana formation, the Leader of the Opposition said though the ruling party had promised Telangana way back in May 2004, it brought it at the fag end of the 15th Lok Sabha. "You have been in power in the last ten years, but you did nothing. You just sat over it", she told Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
