It has been more than five years since combined state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to carve out separate Telangana state and the residuary part remained as Andhra Pradesh.
As per the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014, which had got the President's assent on March 1, 2014, the appointed day for the new states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh is June 2, 2014.
It would mean June 2 will be the new formation day of both the Telugu states. Accordingly, Telangana has been celebrating June 2 as the “Telangana Formation Day” with a lot of pomp and gaiety.
But the residuary Andhra Pradesh has not been celebrating June 2 as the state formation day for various reasons.
First, the first government in residuary AP was formed on June 8, when Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu took oath as the chief minister.
Secondly, Unlike Telangana, Andhra Pradesh was not formed for the first time on June 2.
It had celebrated two formation days in the past – first on October 1, 1953 when the Andhra state was formed, after getting separated from Madras Presidency.
And second one on November 1, 1956, when Telangana was merged with Andhra to form a complete linguistic state of Andhra Pradesh.
Therefore, the question arose as to when AP should celebrate its formation day – June 2 or June 8 or October 1 or November 1.
Because of this dilemma, AP has not been celebrating its formation day for the last five years and is the only state in the country which still does not have such a day.
In fact, Naidu did not want to celebrate the formation day on June 2 and he chose to observe a week-long protest from June 2 to June 8, in the name of Nava Nirmana Deeksha, wherein he used to make the people of divided AP to take a pledge to build a Navyandhra (new AP).
He conveniently ignored the suggestions of intellectuals and other sections of people to choose either October 1 or November 1 as the State Formation Day or even June 2. He continued to organise Nava Nirmana Deeksha, every year in the last five years.
Now that a new government headed by YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was formed, the demand for choosing a day as AP Formation Day has come back to the fore.
Activist Chalasani Srinivas wrote a letter to the chief minister requesting him to start celebrating state formation day. He suggested that the formation day could be held on October 1, when Andhra was created from Madras State in 1953.
Since the name of the State is Andhra Pradesh, which was given on November 1, 1956, he also suggested that November 1 could be considered the state formation day.
One has to wait and see what Jagan would do now, since October 1 is fast approaching. He will definitely not go in for holding Nava Nirmana Deeksha as was done by Naidu. But it is time, the chief minister takes a quick decision on the same.
