Bada Jhoota Party?
The tolerance levels of Telugus have been amazing. It is hard to come across such sterling quality amongst others in the country. Heap one ignominy after another, keep stabbing them multiple times or snatch their daily bread away everyday...they don't mind. Why is it so that the Telugus' take everything in their stride.
It took one NTR to awaken the self-esteem and pride in them and made them famously revolt against the Congress attitude in the past. Since then, it has not been observed that they fight back humiliation inflicted on them. The present set of rulers at the Centre have been the worst in denying the Telugus their due and in addition, it shamelessly claims that it has done everything repeatedly.
The assertions of the BJP leadership that they would continue to extend a helping hand to Andhra Pradesh notwithstanding the fact that its ally, the TDP has walked out of the governance arrangement, seem so frivolous in the face of the latest legal stand as found contained in the Centre's counter affidavit to the Supreme Court in response to a petition filed by senior Congress leader Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy seeking directions to the Centre regarding implementation of the AP Reorganization Act, 2014 promises. The Centre has gone ahead and declared in the affidavit that it had not reneged on any of the promises and has fulfilled each and every of it.
A new game it is playing nowadays is that whenever a demand over any issue is raised it begins defending itself claiming 'only feasibility is to be studied." In the case of steel plant promise as well as Railway Zone, it's maintaining thus. In fact, regarding the demand for Railway Zone, the Railway Ministry had gone ahead – in a different context al beit - and claimed that there were more than 200 such demands from various quarters in the country and it was a divisive demand. The Ministry's response to such demands is that it was more of anti-national demand that obstructs the functioning of the monolith Railways uniformly. The affidavit also claims that the promise of Petroleum University has been fulfilled as it has been established in AP.
If someone has recently called the BJP as a 'Bada Jhoota Party' how apt he was in coining the nomenclature for it! Could there be a greater 'jhoot' than this one? Has the BJP fulfilled all promises when the affidavit itself claims that the oral promise of the former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, made on the floor of the House during the bifurcation process on according the Special Category Status, is none of its business?
Yes, it is futile to seek the Special Category Status in the face of this hard stance. It is now up to the Telugus to decide whether they need to continue to subjugate themselves to these vagaries. As a race, the Telugus must decide whether or not to fight the Centre singlehanded. All that it needs to let the Centre know what mettle the Telugus are made up of is one election. And it is not far off!