THE people of Telangana, India’s youngest state, share a special bond with former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. It was under his watch that their long-cherished dream of a separate state came true in 2014.
As Prime Minister, heading the UPA coalition government, Dr Singh facilitated the passage of the bill in the Parliament to pave the way for carving out Telangana state from the combined Andhra Pradesh.
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder leader and architect of the Telangana statehood movement K Chandrasekhar Rao paid tributes to the former prime minister and said the people of the state would never forget the support that Dr Singh had lent for the creation of Telangana.
“He personally felt inside him the desire of the people for a separate state and supported their cause,” KCR, as the former chief minister is popularly known, said.
“The formation of Telangana during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister was a historic milestone,” he said.
“In pursuance of the statehood goal, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now BRS) joined the UPA in 2004 and I joined Dr Manmohan Singh’s cabinet. The TRS as part of its strategy to make the Union government create a separate state, joined the UPA at that time,” KCR recalled.
In 2004, the TRS fought the general elections in alliance with the Congress. The party won five Lok Sabha seats and KCR was inducted into the Cabinet and assigned the portfolio of Ports, Shipping and Waterways but he relinquished it with DMK, a key regional ally of the UPA from Tamil Nadu, insisting on it.
Later, he took the portfolio of labour and employment. This was all part of KCR’s strategy of getting the UPA partners on board and convincing them about the need for creation of a separate Telangana state.
It was during this period that KCR succeeded in sensitising the Congress about the demand of the people of the Telangana region for a separate state. He used to confer with Dr Singh quite often on the statehood issue.
Dr Singh was the prime minister when the then Union home minister P Chidambaram announced the formation of Telangana state — on the night of 9 December 2009.
It was Dr Singh who declared the formation of Telangana state on the last day of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014 who said that the country was capable of making difficult decisions.
Passage of the Telangana Bill
At the time of the passage of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, the then PM had promised several incentives to Andhra Pradesh to facilitate the formation of the new state of Telangana.
One such promise was according to special category status to Andhra Pradesh in lieu of Hyderabad which went to Telangana. However, the promise has remained on paper to date.
It was through this persuasion with Andhra Pradesh that Telangana could become a reality. Even though the Congress did not have a full majority in the House, he could get the bill passed with the support of allies, which showed his deft handling of the issue.
Telangana Congress leaders say they are indebted to Manmohan Singh as without his involvement and initiative Telangana would not have become a reality. The MPs had fought with the party high command for years, though it was against the party line.
From the beginning, Dr Singh remained resolute in support of the statehood cause even in the face of the MPs of his own party from the Andhra region threatening to resign.
