J C Diwakar Reddy comes out of cocoon, rakes up Rayala Telangana again

ANANTAPUR: J C Diwakar Reddy, former minister and veteran politician from Anantapur, has once again raised the bogey of a ‘Rayala Telangana’, a theory he floated before the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

The former MP, who has been dormant in Andhra Pradesh politics for sometime now, made his presence felt on Monday by raking up the concept of merging the two Rayalaseema districts of Kurnool and Anantapur in Telangana to make it a broader Rayala Telangana.

Talking to the media, J C Diwakar Reddy claimed that a Rayala Telangana would be created very soon and that deliberations to this effect had already been held with Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) supremo and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR). He felt that this was the only way the water woes of Rayalaseema could be mitigated.

The former minister said that it might be a painstaking task to bifurcate states but it was a lot easier to merge them. He also claimed that no one would have reservations against the merger of Rayalaseema in Telangana.

J C Diwakar Reddy also threw his weight behind the idea of a separate Rayalaseema state. “Some people have been talking of a separate Rayalaseema. It will be a happy moment if a separate Rayalaseema is carved out,” he commented.

The senior politician’s latest comments have become viral in the wake of the YSRCP government’s push for the three capitals plan as part of its initiative to decentralise administrative powers. J C Diwakar Reddy made a similar demand at the height of the Samaikhyandhra agitation opposing the carving out of a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh. It was largely seen then as an attempt to safeguard his own political identity in the region following the Congress party high command’s decision to split the state.

J C Diwakar Reddy’s claims come on a day when his younger brother and Tadipatri Municipal Chairman J C Prabhakar Reddy was kept under house arrest amid high tension in Tadipatri. Prabhakar Reddy vowed to stop illegal sand mining and threatened to set fire to vehicles carrying sand loads starting from Monday which prompted the police to initiate preventive measures. More than 100 police personnel were deployed at J C Prabhakar Reddy’s house even as at least eight local TDP leaders were taken into preventive detention.

It is locally perceived that the day-long happenings at J C Prabhakar Reddy’s house in Tadipatri could have acted as a trigger for J C Diwakar Reddy to rake up the ‘Rayala Telangana’ issue again, after many years.