Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury tells KUNAL MAJUMDER the party is unfazed by the Telangana million-man march plan
Opposition parties led by the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) plan to hold a million-man march in Hyderabad on 10 March. Are you worried?
Not at all. I don’t think that the TRS can really pull it off. In my view, this is K Chandrashekhar Rao’s last desperate act. That’s because Telangana belongs to the people and not to an individual.
Has the Congress lost support due to its non-committal position on the Telangana issue?
A little bit of the Congress position has been lost in translation. We didn’t seem to have clarity on what we want and what we don’t want. Somehow we left things to unravel and there was very little coordination. The popular reactions that you actually see in Andhra Pradesh are compulsions of local realities. But the alarming scenario being projected by the TRS also doesn’t exist. That’s a mirage.
In the past, the TRS had alleged that you are anti-Telangana. Your house in Khammam was even ransacked by alleged TRS activists. Do you have a clear stand on this issue?
I don’t know how they have arrived at those conclusions. I have always said that I’m the daughter of Telangana. Khammam, which I represented in the 13th and 14th Lok Sabha, is in the region proposed for Telangana. They had left a letter threatening to chop people like me to pieces. So be it. I’m saying if that’s what they think will help them achieve Telangana, I’m willing to die for it. But I’m not going to run scared.
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