YSR Congress chief Jaganmohan Reddy (file pic)
A day after the government cleared the decks for a Bill to create a new Telangana state, two key politicians have called a strike to protest against the division of Andhra Pradesh.
YSR Congress chief Jaganmohan Reddy and Telugu Desam Party's Chandrababu Naidu have both called for a bandh in the Seemandhra or coastal Andhra region, where politicians are strongly opposed to the state's bifurcation.
Some 10,000 buses are off the roads in Seemandhra. Shops and schools are shut and the streets are mostly deserted but for protesters and security personnel, in a revival of protests two months after thousands of government employees ended an agitation that had paralysed these parts of Andhra Pradesh and disrupted power supply for weeks.
The cabinet on Thursday decided that India's 29th state would consist of the Telangana region's 10 districts, with the residuary state comprising the Rayalaseema and Seemandhra regions. The government abandoned a plan to annexe two more districts from Rayalaseema to create a larger state than originally planned, in what is being viewed as a fallout of recent state polls.
Exit polls have predicted a sweep for the BJP in four of the five states in the assembly poll verdict due on Sunday. The Centre figured that smaller parties will want to side with the BJP on the issue of how to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh.
That calculation led to the burial of what's been called the Rayala-Telangana proposal, which would have given both states an equal number of seats in Parliament and the state legislature and could have helped the Congress glean dividends in the national elections, due by May.
The Telangana Bill will now be sent to the President Pranab Mukherjee, after which it will be introduced in Parliament.
K Chandrasekhara Rao or KCR, who fronted the campaign for a Telangana state, had made it clear with a massive bandh on Thursday that the area would not accept any additional districts.