The following article was written for Niti Central. Pasting it here for reference.
It has been 15 days since Digvijay Singh and Ajay Maken made the announcement that the CWC is recommending to the Government of India to create a separate State of Telangana. It has been 15 days since protests have engulfed the Rayalaseema and Andhra regions. Every passing day made the protests worse and saw agitations getting intensified; and every passing day the number of public representatives who have resigned has only gone up!
From the midnight of August 12, a whopping 4 lakh Government employees belonging to the Rayalaseema and Andhra regions have gone on an indefinite strike, demanding that all the public representatives of the region resign.
Following are the services (Government and otherwise) that have been severely affected.
1. Twelve Ministers have resigned, therefore, they are not attending office. The only thing they are doing now is ‘strategising’ over the next steps for the agitation.
2. Road Transport (nearly 10,000 buses off the road)
3. Revenue Collection
4. Schools and Colleges are all closed, because teachers have also joined the protests.
5. All Non-gazetted employees in all State Government offices have not attended office – effectively no file movement.
6. Most small business shops are closed in the day time.
7. The Tirumala Temple saw the least crowd in nearly 30 years – the reason being that buses going to Tirumala were also off the roads! A late night agreement was reached though to exclude these buses from the general strike.
8. Chief Minister himself has sparsely attended the office in the past couple of days!
Meanwhile, Sonia’s Congress and Digvijay Singh continue to confuse the people of the State. There is a near uniform condemnation from all parties of the tricks that the Congress is playing – even parties that are strong votaries of a separate State are now totally wary of these tricks. The Anthony Committee began work last night it seems. Believe it or not, the committee is also deliberating on whether to visit Hyderabad or call leaders to Delhi ! Even when the State is in such dire straits, these Congress leaders don’t find the need to visit the State and soothe emotions from here! Yesterday, more than 50 MLAs, MLCs, MPs and even Union Cabinet Ministers held a dharna in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue inside Parliament house complex! Their demand was simple – don’t bifurcate the State.
This chicanery of the Congress is definitely not going well with the people of the Rayalaseema and Andhra regions. The Finance Minister P Chidambaram has made a statement in the Rajya Sabha announcing that the Government is going ahead with the process. He has enlightened us by saying that there are two parts to this whole thing – the decision making and the implementation. The decision making has been done and the Government has now started the implementation process. He said that the Home Ministry is preparing a comprehensive note, but has refused to give a timeline to when this report will be ready and tabled! Digvijay Singh, who lives in his own world, has also told us that there is no time limit to Anthony Committee report. The process will continue irrespective of the deliberations of the Committee it seems!
Under such abysmal leadership, the future of the State looks really bleak. And the worst part is that we haven’t seen the worst yet.
0 comments:
Post a Comment