It is being said that the Congress at the Centre will earn political mileage owing to Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) decision to confer upon special status to Hyderabad-Karnataka (H-K) region under Article 371 of the Constitution.
The H-K region comprises Bidar, Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal and Bellary districts. These districts were previously part of Nizam’s Hyderabad. The people of the region have been agitating for the last two decades in this regard. The state governments since 1994 also put pressure on the Union government to confer special status to the region, which is considered as the most backward area in the state.
Armed with the unanimous resolution, the state government met the Union government to bring amendment to the Article 371. Earlier, it had taken various delegations to New Delhi to convince governments led by UPA and NDA. It is being said that the special status would remove regional imbalance in the area. The NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had categorically rejected the state’s plea on the issue.
Hyderabad-Karnataka Horata Samithi is an apolitical organisation under which the people of the region fought for the special status. The organisation enjoys the blessings of all political parties but the Congress is likely to grab the credit for conceding the demand of the people of the region. Former minister and president of the Hyderabad-Karnataka Horata Samithi, Vyjanath Patil welcomed the decision of the UPA government.
Refusing to give the credit to any particular political parties, Patil said, “Credit must go to all the political parties.”
KPCC president Dr G Parameshwar, in a statement issued immediately after the decision of the CCPA said that all credit must go to Union minister Mallikarjuna Kharge and Lok Sabha member N Dharam Singh, who lobbied hard with the party leaders to concede the long pending demand. The decision of the Congress is also likely to help the party in the upcoming Assembly elections to gain its lost grounds in the region. Party supremo Sonia Gandhi had chose to fight Lok Sabha elections in 1999 and found Bellary as the safest seat and won against BJP’s Sushma Swaraj. However, the in the subsequent years, the district came under the BJP rule.
Now, the Congress is expected to harvest the sentiments of the people of the state on this issue in the upcoming Assembly elections.
Out of the five Lok Sabha seats, the Congress had won only two seats in 2009 general elections. Earlier, Bidar to Bellary was considered as Congress citadel before the BJP came to power.
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