FEEL LIKE A MOTHER, SONIA SAYS AT RALLY IN TELANGANA

HYDERABAD: The decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh was not an easy one and the Congress party had to pay a political price for it, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi said on Friday in Telangana at her first campaign appearance in the current round of state elections.

In her emotional campaign speech in Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad, Gandhi also launched a scathing attack on the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). Congress president Rahul Gandhi shared the stage with his mother and predecessor at the rally.

“It is an emotional moment for me..I feel like a mother who is meeting her children after several years,” said Gandhi, who was on her maiden visit to the state after its formation in June 2014.

The decision to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh to create Telangana as India’s youngest state was taken during the regime of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which lost national power in elections the same year.

The TRS, which spearheaded the statehood campaign, trounced the Congress in Telangana.

The party also lost power in residuary Andhra Pradesh, where public opinion was staunchly against the creation of Telangana.

In the 2014 polls, the Congress did not win a single seat in the 175-member Telangana state assembly or in the Lok Sabha elections for 25 seats.

Gandhi said the bifurcation “was no small decision” but former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and the Congress backed statehood for Telangana.

“Politically, it was a loss for the party. Yet we had taken the decision in the larger interest of the people of Telangana,” she said.

Gandhi also reached out to the people of Andhra Pradesh, promising special category status to the state if the Congress returned to power at the Centre in next year’s general elections.