KTR and Jana Reddy Face Off in the Assembly

Hyderabad: Day four of the winter session of the Telangana Assembly witnessed few moments of intense debate between the Congress MLA Jana Reddy and TRS party’s KT Rama Rao with KTR in the end, demanding Jana Reddy to withdraw his comments.

Ironically, the war of words between the MLA and the minister was not about any impending concern or even about a developmental issue, but rather about the emotive issue of Telangana and about who could lay claim to it as their own.

While Minister Etala Rajender was addressing the Assembly he curiously kept making references to the state as ‘My Telangana’ (Na Telangana) instead of ‘Our Telangana’ (Maa Telangana). This did not seem to go down well with Jana Reddy who did not hesitate to express this to the house.

Soon KTR interjected saying -

The Congress party never made Telangana its own. In 1956 they forced an unwilling marriage and brought injustice on the people of the state. Congress party did not give us Telangana, we had to fight for it.

To try and counter this Jana Reddy said that it was after the Andhra leaders resigned en masse that KTR visited his house and sought his counsel on how to achieve a separate Telangana, and that it was he who took the responsibility of convincing Sonia Gandhi to decide on a separate Telangana.

Jana Reddy pointed out that it was the Congress party that was in power in the state as well as the Centre at that time and had it chose to it could have easily thwarted the Telangana movement.

Offended at these statements, KTR demanded that Jana Reddy withdraw his statements immediately.