PM, forget AP, even Bihar is waiting for the ‘special category status’ for the last 18 years

While delivering a fairly long speech in the Lok Sabha during the debate on trust vote on July 20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that everything went on smoothly at the time of creation of three new states––Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh––in 2000 when the NDA was in power, which was not the case while bifurcating Andhra Pradesh in 2014. He put all the blame on the then UPA government for the messy bifurcation even as the TDP blamed both BJP and the UPA.

But as usual, he seems to have overlooked some glaring facts. If what he said is really the case then why the alliance partner of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar, the Janata Dal (United) of chief minister Nitish Kumar is still demanding the special category status 18 years after the mineral rich part of the state was hewed out and Jharkhand came into existence ?

Interestingly, on the eve of the 2009 Lok Sabha election Nitish even made a condition to support that party or alliance which backs the demand of special category status to Bihar. He may even make this a condition in the 2019 poll too.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government then did not fulfil Bihar’s demand of ₹176,000 crore as the compensation for the loss of mines from which it was earning royalty. A resolution in this regard was unanimously passed in Bihar Assembly on the eve of the bifurcation of the state. The BJP and JD(U) legislator––then in opposition––also voted in favour of the resolution. It is other thing that Nitish Kumar and LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan were in the Vajpayee cabinet.

If the Rashtriya Janata Dal leaders are to be believed it was none else but Nitish who opposed the demand of the Special Category Status then made by the Rabri Devi government.

Thus things never remained as smooth as Modi wanted the people to believe.

Besides, both Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand ended up becoming the strong bastion of the Maoists even though these two states mostly had––and still have––the BJP rule. While Naxal violence has somewhat subsided in Jharkhand, the Raman Singh-ruled Chhattisgarh saw some daring attacks by the Maoists.

The issues related to the bifurcation of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and creation of new states of Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand might have been sorted out in a better way than Bihar, yet the Prime Minister missed to see the wood for the trees.

What he failed to appreciate is that the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana is quite different from the three states mentioned by him.

Actually Andhra Pradesh was the first state to be created on linguistic basis in 1953. That was just before the formation of States Reorganization Commission that year.

The problem with the partition of Andhra Pradesh is that Telangana was not some far off territory away from the capital as in the case of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.

In this case the remaining Andhra Pradesh was losing the capital city of Hyderabad as well as Secunderabad. That was a big loss as huge amount of developmental activities had taken place in the twin cities. It is other thing that the rest of Telangana is very backward in comparison to coastal Andhra Pradesh, which has one of the best fertile land in the country and economic activities in places like the port city of Vishakhapatnam is much better.

So the nature of problem both these two states had to face in the initial years were quite different. Hyderabad is geographically not even situated like Chandigarh, which is the Union Territory as well as capital of both Punjab and Haryana.

The recent moves by Telugu Desam Party as well as of Telangana Rashtriya Samiti may be politically motivated. But then the BJP cannot turn blind eye to the fact that TDP was one of its oldest allies.

Besides, Modi cannot shy away by blaming the then UPA government as Telangana officially came into existence a few days after he came to power.