Would BJP change Telangana game plan?

HYDERABAD: With the Congress biting the dust in the Assembly elections, Seemandhra leaders are now entertaining first stirrings of hope that the BJP may, after all, not support the Telangana bill in Parliament. Their Telangana counterparts, however, believe the BJP, which has committed itself to a separate T State, will find it difficult to take a U-turn.

The Seemandhra camp reasons that UPA allies may not like to sail with a Congress that is doomed. In which case, the BJP may back off from supporting the T bill on the ground that a minority government cannot enact such an important legislation.

'The draft bill has a number of loopholes and each one presents an opportunity for the BJP, an excuse, not to support the bill. When it is going to come to power in 2014, why should it give credit to the Congress now?' a Seemandhra Congress leader remarked. Further, he pointed out that the BJP, in any case, has no big stakes in Telangana.

'On the contrary, by stalling the bill and joining hands with TDP's Chandrababu Naidu, the BJP can win a couple of MP seats in Seemandhra,' opined the leader from Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy's camp.

Amalapuram MP GV Harsha Kumar said in Kakinada, 'If the Centre still presses for division of the State, we are ready to move a no-confidence motion in the House with the support of the Opposition parties. We will not resign but will stay in Parliament and vote against the bill and move a no-confidence motion.'

Telangana leaders, however, dismissed these arguments. 'The bill, having come this far, is impossible to stop. Seemandhra leaders are experts in campaigning against the bill. Since July 30 when the CWC took the T decision, they have been predicting that the process would get stalled. But has it?,' Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar questioned.

He claimed that despite the drubbing, no UPA ally would ditch the Congress and join hands with the BJP. Another Telangana leader opined that even some Seemandhra MPs who are threatening to resign may not do so.

'It is for public consumption. Everyone knows that. They will stay in Congress because they have nowhere else to go. Of the 11 MPs, at least five cannot go to the YSRC or the TDP and they cannot win as independents.

So, they will have to stay with the Congress and they will,' he said. Rajya Sabha member V Hanumantha Rao recalled that BJP leader Sushma Swaraj had reiterated her party's commitment to Telangana time and again.

'When Rayala Telangana was floated, the BJP said it supports the bill only if it is for a 10-district Telangana. Now it is T bill and the BJP is bound to support it,' he said.

Former PCC president D Srinivas felt the election results may not impact the UPA or for that matter, the process set in motion for the division of the state.

'There is no way the UPA can collapse and the division stopped. In fact, division of the state is over,' he said and advised his Seemandhra counterparts to reconcile themselves to the inevitable and bargain for the best possible package.