The saddest day in the history of Telangana – 1st November 1956, gets sadder every year.

Today, as in the past many years, “The AndhraPradesh Formation Day” will be observed as “Betrayal Day” in entire Telanganaregion. Black flags will be hoisted at every place, especially at places wherethe national flag is normally hoisted.  Therewill be protest rallies and meetings demanding separate statehood forTelangana. Ministers, MLAs and political party members belonging to Telanganahave decided to boycott all celebrations and events pertaining to Stateformation day. Sri Konda Laxman Bapuji, freedom fighter and one fighting forSeparate Telangana State for over four decades and who is 96 years old now willbe going on a 7-day fast from today morning at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi,demanding Telangana State. Former State Minister and Congress MLA SriKomatireddy Venkat Reddy will commence his indefinite hunger strike at Nalgondatoday, demanding the Government to announce and speed up the process offormation of Telangana State.

Andhra and Telangana were merged on 1stNovember 1956, against the recommendations of the ‘First States ReorganizationCommission’ (First SRC) popularly known as ‘Fazal Ali Commission’ and thereafterall agreements made from time to time and corrective actions to safeguard job opportunitiesand development in Telangana have been diluted. The list of injustices in everyaspect of governance is enormous. Protests against these injustices have been madeby the people from the very beginning but unfortunately due to selfishpoliticians from Telangana who turned a blind eye to the local problems tosafeguard their personal interests and priorities, the problems of Telangana andthe frustration of the people simply grew. The yearlong separate Telangana agitationin 1969 was violent, over 360 agitators were shot dead and the agitation was suppressedpolitically by luring politicians and with a fresh agreement which was neverimplemented.

The demand for separate State continued andstarting from 2004 every major political party in the State and Center startedpromising Telangana State during elections and forgot the Telangana issueimmediately after winning the elections or gave excuse after excuse fordelaying or not fulfilling the promise. This trend continued in the 2009general elections too, just for the cause of winning elections and coming topower to fulfill their personal agendas. And on 9th December 2009, when theCentral Government announced that the process for formation of ‘Telangana State’has commenced, there were protests by some politicians who all along fooled theTelangana electorate that they have no objection to the formation of Telanganaand that they would abide by the decision of the Central Government. With theseprotests the Central Government buckled and since two years it is saying thatit is carrying out discussions to find a permanent solution, narrowdiscussions, wider discussions, consensus discussions, all party discussions,sub-core committee discussions, core committee discussions, discussions afterelections, discussions after results, discussions in the new year, discussionsafter Ramzan, discussions after Dasara, Discussions after Diwali and nowdiscussions after Bakrid festival. I do not know when these discussions wouldend and in the meantime over 600 frustrated aspirants of Telangana haveunfortunately ended their lives.

The agitation in Telangana is continuing in spiteof several tricks and moves to suppress it. I wish it continues until theseshameless deceivers bow down to fulfill their promise of a separate TelanganaState, exactly as the people are demanding it.

P.S. Dated-2nd November: You may read about theintensity of the Betrayal Day/Black Day agitation in Telangana yesterday, 1stNov. - I am producing below today’s newspaper clippings; if you read themcarefully you will understand the intensity of the agitation. I hope the irresponsibleand the deceiving politicians busy with their profiteering activities wouldtake time to read newspapers to understand the ground situation in Telangana.