Hyderabad, Jan. 6: Ask the pitamah (grandfather) of the Telangana agitation why statehood is necessary, and he says it’s because “the world is short of gentlemen, particularly in this part of the world”.

Konda Lakshman Bapuji’s reference is to the “betrayal” of the “gentlemen’s agreement”, signed between Telangana and Andhra leaders before the two regions merged to form Andhra Pradesh in 1956.

Bapuji, who is over 80, has been championing the Telangana cause since he was 20, starting with his battles against the Nizam.

It’s the violation of the “gentlemen’s agreement”, aimed at preventing discrimination against the people of Telangana by the state government, that has led to the statehood movement, Telangana campaigners say.

“The agreement was guaranteed by a presidential declaration, but the much needed edge in education, irrigation, industry or employment never came — not even the basic urban growth needed for development,” said K.V. Keshavulu, a former Congress minister.

Former Union minister G. Venkatswamy said: “The Andhras (coastal residents) denied us not only power but also funds once they seized the seat of government.”

Now Venkatswamy’s industrialist turned politician son G. Vivek (of Hyderabad Industries which has a cement unit in Bengal) has emerged as the key figure among Telangana’s pro-statehood Congress MPs. Vivek is MP from Peddapalli, which his father had won seven times.

The then chief ministers of Hyderabad and Andhra states, B. Ramakrishna Rao and Bezwada Gopala Reddy, were among the signatories to the “gentlemen’s agreement”. A presidential order lent the pact further weight.

But the agreement was undermined step by step and since 1980, hardly any of its provisions have been followed, say old-timers.

Bad start

Telangana campaigners claim that the formation of Andhra Pradesh was contractual — it was conditional on the “gentlemen’s agreement”, and so the pact’s violation can be interpreted as negating the state’s formation.

They allege it was violated on the very first day. The first Andhra Pradesh chief minister, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, a signatory to the “gentlemen’s agreement”, had ridiculed the post of deputy chief minister as a useless “sixth finger”. He made no effort to have one.

The post was later created but for a short while. The state’s last deputy chief minister held office in the early 1970s. Andhra Pradesh last had a chief minister from Telangana in 1990 when M. Channa Reddy held the post for the second time.

Channa Reddy is a sore point with statehood campaigners. In his early days, he had fought for Telangana alongside Bapuji and formed a party, the Telangana Praja Samiti.

“But he stifled the Telangana movement after his party won 14 Lok Sabha and 65 Assembly seats in 1978, and he became chief minister by merging his party with the Congress of Indira Gandhi,” a senior Congress leader and Telangana campaigner said.

Toothless board

In the mid-1970s, the Telangana Regional Standing Committee, mandated by the “gentlemen’s agreement”, was replaced by a regional development board with ostensibly wider powers over planning and funds. But it was gradually made toothless.

Channa Reddy, who was chief minister in 1978-80 and 1989-90, did not want a rival body to challenge him. “Why should there be such a body when the entire government led by me is pro-Telangana?” he had said.

When Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy was chief minister (2004-2009), he denied the board funds and even a decent office to function from, said Uppunutala Purushottam Reddy, former minister and the board’s last chairman. The board still exists on paper but since the 2009 elections, no chairman has been nominated.

YSR, a staunch opponent of Telangana statehood, had nominated Purushottam Reddy as board chairman in early 2006 after the agitation picked up.

“But I was never given a say in the plans for the region or even allowed to tour the region. In his final days, YSR even had the board office thrown out of a government building,” Purushottam Reddy said.

Hope that failed

When N.T. Rama Rao was chief minister (1982-89), he had passed an executive order facilitating jobs for Telangana’s local population to pay his debt to the backward communities that had voted him to power.

But Rama Rao couldn’t fully implement the order because of pressures from within his Telugu Desam Party, largely based in the coastal districts.

Chandrababu Naidu couldn’t care less about the order and later Congress chief ministers too ignored it, said K. Chandrasekhar Rao, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief who is spearheading the current statehood movement.

“YSR hardly bothered about implementation of either the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ or (Rama Rao’s) government order,” said Harish Rao, a Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader.

Chandrasekhar Rao said: “The absence of development was explained away as the result of Telangana people’s laziness and lack of enterprise. The Maoists were shown as the cause of the lack of investments and industrialisation.”

PC APPEAL

Excerpts from the opening remarks of Union home minister P. Chidambaram at a meeting of political parties from Andhra Pradesh to discuss the Srikrishna Committee report

I note that some political parties invited to this meeting have chosen not to attend the meeting. I deeply regret the stand taken by them. It does scant justice to the valuable work done by the Justice Srikrishna Committee and the report submitted by the committee.

Nevertheless, I propose to send a copy of the report to the parties that have chosen to stay away. As I speak, the report is being uploaded on the website of the ministry
of home affairs and will be available to the public immediately.

I urge you to give your most careful, thoughtful and impartial consideration to the report and the recommendations. In particular, I would urge you to read the report and the recommendations with an open mind and be prepared to persuade, and to be
persuaded by, people who hold another point of view.

It is the government’s sincere hope that the report will generate an informed and mature debate.

Our discussions on January 5, 2010, showed the way forward: fact-finding, study, analysis, options and recommendations. It is the government’s hope that our discussions today will also show the further way forward.

I am sure that, besides the political parties, the people of Andhra Pradesh — both
individuals and groups — would also make valuable suggestions that will show the way forward.

You will note that I have repeatedly used the phrase ‘way forward’. I do so in order to reiterate the government’s intention to find a just, honourable and practicable solution that has the widest measure of support among all stakeholders.

While the political parties consider the report and engage themselves in the search for a solution, it is necessary that peace, harmony and law and order should be maintained in Andhra Pradesh. I would request you to join me, at the end of this meeting, to make an appeal similar to the appeal that we made last year. If all of you agree, I suggest that we meet again on a convenient date later this month.