(Image source from: Andhra Pradesh divided)

At last, Congress seems to have cast the die on the raging Telangana issue. The party, has apparently decided to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh, as conveyed in the core group meeting held on Friday. But wait! There is an anticlimax here. The new state will be called Hyderabad and not Telangana.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, who is supervising Andhra Pradesh affairs, revealed that the new state will be named Hyderabad. The core group meeting, headed by party chief Sonia Gandhi, was attended by chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, his deputy, Damodar Rajanarasimha, prime minister Manmohan Singh and senior ministers like AK Antony, P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde and Ghulam Nabi Azad. The formal announcement is due in a few days time.

The resurgence of Hyderabad is historic! What was once the largest and most prosperous of all princely states post partition, was split into Andhra Pradesh and Bombay on linguistic lines in 1956. The state was further divided into Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka later.

“The consultation process is over. Now, wait for the decision of the party as well as the UPA government,” Digvijay said after the meeting.

While Reddy and Botsa Satyanarayana opposed the bifurcation, Rajanarasimha welcomed the decision.

Insiders reveal that Digvijay gagged the “unhappy” chief minister by telling him that Congress president Sonia Gandhi was stern on her decision, and, therefore, “the issue is now closed”.

As Congress prepped up for the bifurcation, three Congress MLAs and 16 MLAs of Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress resigned from office on Thursday evening, asking for a united state.

Image Source: NDTV

AW: Suchorita Dutta