Till recently, it looked like the Congress party had one ally in BJP when it came to the Telangana issue.
But now, different opinions are being voiced by different leaders within the party. It hasn’t been long since Advani said that the T Bill should not be tabled.
Then, Sushma Swaraj was all over national television saying that the T Bill was not introduced in the Parliament.
Now, the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections Narendra Modi has said that Sonia Gandhi was poisoning the people based on the Telangana issue.
From this latest comment, it is quite obvious that he was indirectly supporting the Samaikyandhra cause.
The Telangana leaders in the BJP who rallied for Telangana were hitherto happy with Sonia Gandhi’s stand on Telangana. But Namo’s statement has stirred the hornet’s nest.
Though the BJP Telangana leaders are confident that the party would vote for the Telangana Bill in the Parliament, they feel such comments by the top leaders will impact their chances during the forthcoming elections.
Also, during an interaction with the media in Vizag, Venkaiah Naidu read out a rather long list of demands for Seemandhra, if the bifurcation were to become a reality. However, some of these points were already covered by the Centre in the draft Telangana Bill.
Due to these developments, the T BJP leaders are worried that the party’s chances might get weakened in the Telangana region.
In fact, they even met up with Rajnath Singh and threatened that they will not contest in the forthcoming elections if the top leaders continue to have differences of opinion.
Immediately after that, in an effort to do damage control, Rajnath Singh announced that the party was committed to Telangana. And just as the BJP T leaders were heaving a sigh of relief, Arun Jaitley announced that it was necessary for leaders from both sides to come to an understanding.
Though it is clear that such an understanding is next to impossible given the present situation, BJP T leaders are worried about Arun Jaitley timing his comments.
And to top it all, Modi and Venkaiah Naidu’s comments have left them more confused.
There are likely to be many more twists and turns in the story in the coming four days!
