Kiran is right, but wakes up a year later

HYDERABAD: Notwithstanding his 'good' presentation before the GoM against bifurcation of the State, neither Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy nor his close aides appear confident that the process would be halted.

All those who called on Kiran Reddy at his camp-office here Tuesday returned with the impression that the GoM gave him a patient hearing, nothing more than that. Kiran Reddy is also understood to have told them that irrespective of his strong stand, Delhi appeared to be going ahead with its own plans.

According to sources, at the end of Kiran's presentation, one of the union ministers remarked sarcastically that he should have brought up all these issues at least a year before.

Kiran himself was well aware of this fact, it seems. A few days before his Delhi visit, in the process of gathering details on various subjects, he is learnt to have told officials that he didn't expect the T process to move so fast and that his calculations had gone awry.

Sharing the same view, quite a few State ministers from Andhra and Rayalaseema now seem to be regretting their role in fuelling the Samaikyandhra agitation ' which they did in the belief that the Chief Minister and Union Ministers from the two regions would somehow manage to stall division.

'In the first few days after the T announcement, the reaction was muted. Unwittingly, we seemed to have dug our own grave,' one of them told.

Some others pointed out that Congress prospects in Seemandhra would not have suffered as much as they did but for the agitation and public mood which they themselves had nurtured. And the political damage that has been suffered cannot be undone now.

In the nearly four months that went by, the Seemandhra Union Ministers too have changed their position, seeking concessions and packages instead of opposing division tooth and nail.

Meanwhile, information from Delhi indicates that almost the entire Union Home Ministry has been engaged in the Telangana exercise for at least a month. In its bid to meet the deadline ' the Centre wants to table the Telangana bill in Winter Session of Parliament beginning Dec 5-the ministry seems to be racing against time to give a final shape to the bill.

Indicating how preoccupied the Centre is with the issue, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh is understood to have quipped, in response to a query on his absence from election rallies in poll-bound States, that for him and several others at the Centre, nothing but Telangana has been on mind for the last one month.