TRS merger will benefit Congress

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Publication: The Times Of India Hyderabad;Date: Jan 19, 2013;Section: Times City;Page: 9

TRS merger will benefit Congress Secret Survey Says Cong, TRS Will Be Heavy Losers If T Is Not Announced
TIMES NEWS NETWORK Hyderabad: Seconding the reported positive moves being made by the Congress high command on the Telangana front, a section of the state ruling party is of the view that the Congress would stand to benefit by granting the separate state only if it links it to a merger of the TRS with the grand old party. These leaders claimed that a survey commissioned by them came to this conclusion, and that they had conveyed the same to AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi to be discussed at the Congress Chintan Shivir which started on Friday in Jaipur. The survey, said to have been conducted by a private agency, claimed that the Congress after merger with TRS is likely to bag 12 to 14 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats and 70 to 80 of the 119 Assembly seats in the region. The Congress high command has taken the Telangana issue seriously. Keeping the January 28 deadline in mind, Rahul wanted us to give him authentic inputs for his consideration. We hired a private agency to do the survey, and submitted its findings to Rahul on January 14, said a Congress MP from Telangana. According to the survey, in case Telangana is not announced before the 2014 elections, then both the Congress and the TRS would be the heavy losers. The outcome of the survey is clear that the Congress must take a proactive step in dealing with the Telangana issue, and the party must join hands with the TRS if it wants to reap the benefits of the formation of Telangana state. And it is inevitable for the TRS to go for the merger with the Congress, said the Congress MP. In a measured response to the query relating to the survey report, the TRS leaders said their party was open to all the options that would ensure the formation of a separate state. In October last year, when the Congress leaders invited us to discuss Telangana, the issue of merger had come up. But, they retracted after a point of time during the discussion in Delhi. Now, they are saying their survey suggested the merger. We dont want to say anything at this juncture. Our course of action depends on the political situation, said B Vinod Kumar, a politburo member of TRS. The survey report said the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) would gain some ground in the region thanks to its pro-Telangana stand expressed in the allparty meeting held on December 28 2012. But, the report sounded a death knell for the Telangana Congress ministers and legislators, who took neutral stand on the state division issue, as it predicted they would be severely punished by the voters in the next elections weather Telangana state is formed or not. The report said there would be little change for the pro-Telangana parties like BJP, and CPI as they can hardly improve their tally even if the separate state is granted. However, the report said, the YSR Congress was expected to grow stronger thanks to the joining of defectors from the other parties including Congress, TDP, and TRS.

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19-01-2013 10:43