Mumbai:
As the government announced that Telangana will be India's 29th state, the Congress, which has impelled the move, has had to engage with a welter of political repercussions.
Some of its senior leaders from Andhra Pradesh are unhappy with the decision to split the state.
Others, in Maharashtra, are emboldened by the Telangana news to demand that the eastern region of Vidarbha be recognised as a state.
"The demand of statehood for Vidarbha is stronger and older than Telangana," said Vilas Muttemwar, a Congress MP from Nagpur, who is a member of the party's top decision-making body, the Working Committee, which will meet today to formally endorse Telangana as a state.
The Congress co-governs Maharashtra with Sharad Pawar's party, the Nationalist Congress Party or NCP.
Mr Muttemwar, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha seven times, said he has written to party president Sonia Gandhi with his pitch to grant statehood to Vidarbha, which has 11 districts and 21% of Maharashtra's population and is rich in natural resources. However, it remains under-developed and seeped in poverty.
"There have been 45,000 farmer suicides (in Vidarbha). Thousands have died due to malnutrition. There is no industry," Mr Muttemwar said.
In 1960, Vidarbha was included as a part of the then new state of Maharashtra, though its leaders had petitioned for a separate state with Nagpur as its capital.
The Shiv Sena, headed by Uddhav Thackeray, has said it does not agree with the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and will combat any attempt to partition Vidarbha from the rest of Maharashtra.