Strike over plan to divide Indian state cuts electricity

Striking workers shut off electricity and cellphone service to a large swath of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday, as hundreds of thousands of government employees protested a decision to divide the state into two parts.

Last week, India's governing coalition announced that it would create the new state, Telangana, infuriating many who will be left in the remaining "rump" of Andhra Pradesh, which stands to lose tax revenues that flow into the booming city of Hyderabad. The city is now Andhra Pradesh's capital but would eventually become Telangana's after the split. The police declared a curfew in some areas after protesters blocked major highways using barricades of burning tires.

A former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, began a hunger strike on Monday to protest the decision, telling visitors in a tent outside the state's offices in New Delhi that the government's move was politically motivated.

"If you do it for political gain, nobody will be convinced," Naidu told reporters Tuesday. "I asked them to sort out the problem, but they have created a bigger problem."

Critics say the Indian National Congress, the governing national party, took the step now because it hoped to cash in on votes in the newly formed state ahead of general elections in 2014.

India's 29th state would be in a drought-ridden inland region that has long felt marginalized by coastal elites, and its creation would come after years of passionate lobbying by its supporters, including hunger strikes and scores of suicides. Supporters say that residents of the coastal Seemandhra region, which includes Hyderabad, have monopolized state power and public resources for years, and they believe that the new state will improve their lives.

But the proposed split - which must still be approved by the state assembly and passed by both houses of Parliament - deprives the coastal region of tax revenue flowing from the cluster of industry around Hyderabad. Opponents of the plan have attacked houses and businesses belonging to regional leaders of the Congress party.

K.T. Rama Rao, a leader of a political party that supported the division, blamed regional leaders for mishandling the issue. He said many politicians who had argued passionately in favor of creating Telangana, and participated in exhaustive debates that led to the decision, were now opposing it.

"You can't change your colours seasonally," he said. "It is rank political opportunism. The people of Telangana are not willing to be fooled again and again."

Opposition to the plan comes mostly from Seemandhra, whose residents have long migrated to Hyderabad, where many services came to a halt over the weekend. Journalists in the region reported that bank machines were no longer supplying currency, and that service to tens of thousands of mobile phones went dead, exacerbating the effects of the blackout. Hospitals were operating emergency units with the help of generators, as stores of diesel dwindled, according to Indian news reports.

(Hari Kumar contributed reporting.)