As Shah meets BJP men; TDP, TRS hopes brighten

Hyderabad: Hopes of TRS and TDP have brightened with BJP chief Amit Shah summoning party leaders of both the states of Telangana and AP for a meeting at Delhi on Thursday to elicit their views on the issue of effecting delimitation of Assembly constituencies in both the states and possibly creation of a separate railway zone with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters.

The leaders of the BJP from both the states have left for Delhi already, and are getting ready for the conference with their party chief. The Chief Ministers of both the states have been looking forward to a decision on the delimitation as it has been guaranteed by the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014.

As regards the delimitation, the Centre has been dragging its feet in attending to it as it would not benefit the BJP in any way either in Telangana or in Andhra. Both KCR and Naidu have been told by the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister in June last that it may not be possible to enhance the number of seats before 2019.

Hoping that seats would be increased from 119 to 153 in Telangana and from 175 to 225 in AP, both the Chief Ministers have allowed defections of MLAs from the Congress and TDP in Telangana and from YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh. If there is no increase in the number of seats, they would face a tough time accommodating the turncoats which may lead to fresh complications.

There is a hitch in increasing the number of seats as the next delimitation could be done based on the census data after 2026 under Article 170 of the Constitution. If delimitation has to be done earlier, a constitutional amendment would be required.

In Telangana, the BJP is opposed to any increase in seats as it would only help the ruling TRS and to some extent the Majlis. In AP too, it would help the TDP but since the BJP is its ally, the party state unit had not opposed it vehemently.

The BJP leaders hope that Amit shah might also raise the issue of railway zone. The BJP AP unit wants an early decision on creation of a zone for AP with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters. Creation of Visakhapatnam Railway Zone has been kept in cold storage following opposition to it from Odisha as East Coast Zone which has headquarters in Bhubaneswar would lose Visakhapatnam Railway division, which serves as its cash cow. 

AP BJP state president K Haribabu won the Lok Sabha election in 2014 from Visakhapatnam with a promise that he would influence the Centre in carving out a separate railway zone. Though he belongs to the BJP and the promise has been made in the AP Reorganisation Act, nothing had moved with Odisha opposing it.