KCR writes to President against merger move

HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief K Chandrasekhara Rao has dashed off a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee urging him not to give assent to the ordinance seeking merger of seven mandals in Khammam district with residuary state of Andhra Pradesh.

Chandrasekhara Rao, in his letter late on Wednesday night, argued against promulgation of the ordinance altering the boundaries of the new Telangana state, bypassing the sovereign powers of Parliament.

He said alteration of the boundaries of Telangana by deleting seven mandals has to come in the form of a bill before the President and it has to be sent to the Assemblies of Telangana and residuary Andhra Pradesh for expression of their views and then both the Houses of Parliament should approve the bill after duly considering the views of the states, and finally such bill should come before the President for approval.

He said circumventing this democratic procedure for no extraordinary reason, but only for satisfying ruling BJP's ally Telugu Desam, which is opposing the formation of Telangana state, is highly unconstitutional.

He said removing seven mandals from Telangana and adding them to AP is to facilitate inundation of hundreds of villages of the tribal, against their will, under a project called Polavaram, which was not approved by the competent authorities in the Union government. The best way forward for the project is to redesign it.

He said the project also affects the neighbouring states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha, which are also opposed to it. The real motive behind this hurried ordinance is to transfer Lower Sileru Hydel Power Project (450 mw) from Telangana to Andhra. This project lies in one of the seven mandals which are proposed to be transferred to Andhra, he said.

Chandrasekhara Rao argued that there were no extraordinary circumstances that emerged all of a sudden, warranting issue of an ordinance. The circumstances which existed when Parliament considered the AP Reorganisation Bill during February 2014 did not change now to justify issue of an ordinance, he said.

He said it was unfortunate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had chosen an undemocratic course of promulgation of ordinance to alter the boundaries of the new state of Telangana.

Narendra Modi's council of ministers is asking the President to exercise powers which he does not have under the Constitution. Chandrasekhara Rao said.