Cong. for no hasty decision on Telangana

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JUNE 23. The Congress-I Working Committee (CWC) member, Mr.Pranab Mukherjee, has made it clear that the party is not prepared to take any ``hasty decision'' on the demand for a separate State of Telangana.

At an impromptu press conference here on Saturday, he said that the issue of Telangana cannot be linked to the ensuing Panchayat Raj elections in Andhra Pradesh. The party leadership will not be hustled into taking a stand on a sensitive issue, he said.

Formation of a new State was a far more serious issue than the elections, which was held once in five years. The State of Andhra Pradesh was formed in 1956 and since then there had been many elections, he said in reply to questions.

Mr.Mukherjee, who heads the sub-committee of the Congress on smaller States, pointed out that the party would like to examine the demand for Telangana in the context of similar demands from Vidharbha and other regions. The sub-committee was seized of the matter.

The CWC member maintained that the Congress-I MLAs from Telanagana, seeking a statehood, did not serve any ultimatum as reported in a section of the press. The MLAs had put forth their views which were being examined by the sub-committee. He did not agree with the view that the high command was ``dilly dallying'' over the issue.

He was evasive on the possibility of an alliance between the Congress-I and the Telangana Rastra Samithi (TRS) for the local body elections. The TRS had mooted the idea of having truck with the Congress-I in the event of the AICC adopting a resolution in favour of separate Telangana. All that Mr.Mukherjee would say was that the party would like to separate the Telangana problem from the Panchayat Raj polls.

Earlier, delivering the valedictory address at the Southern Regional Political Training Camp of the Congress, Mr.Mukherjee said the defence scandal exposed by Tehalka.com could have been averted if the Prime Minister, Mr.Atal Behari Vajpayee, acted decisively on the ``early warnings'' sounded by the retired Navy Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwath. He said the Prime Minister should have intervened when a controversy raged between the Admiral and the Defence Minister. He and Mr.Manmohan Singh had met Mr.Vajpayee and advised the latter to intervene in the interests of national security. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister refrained from acting decisively.

Mr.Mukherjee said the economic reforms were not a ``mantra'' to be chanted occasionally. The Congress Government pioneered the reforms with the objective of creating more jobs and eradication of poverty. But the NDA Government mounted a politically motivated false propaganda that the ills of the economy were attributable to the WTO agreement signed by the Congress-I Government.

He said the agreement signed by him as Commerce Minister in 1994 did not envisage cut in agricultural subsidies or any threat to the public distribution system.

Mr.Mukherjee said Information Technology alone would not help meet the target of providing 10 million jobs every year including the backlog at the beginning of the tenth five year, plan. He said the decrease in the sale of ordinary passenger cars from 55,500 to 43,400 and the increase in the sale of luxury cars from 52,000 to 78,000 in April this year was symptomatic of the malaise that was setting in due to the wrong economic policies being pursued by the Government.

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