A new Joint Action Committee to expose KCR’s ‘betrayal’ in making

Hyderabad: Leaders from across the political spectrum are understood to be slowly gravitating towards creating a Joint Action Committee (JAC) to work in Telangana state with the sole aim of "exposing the great betrayal of the spirit of statehood agitation" by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.

Claiming to be inspired by the philosophy of Telangana ideologue the late Prof. A. Jayashankar, several leaders had their first formal meeting to create the JAC, ‘comprising members from the RSS to the RSU, who solely wish to make people of Telangana aware how their struggle and sacrifices for statehood have not led to the fulfilment of their truest aspirations.’

The first meeting of the as-yet unnamed panel, going presently by the name of Udyama Akanshalu Committee (committee for aspirations of struggle), was attended by former minister Dr A. Chandrashekar, former MLA Yennam Srinivas Reddy, former JAC convener and MLC K. Swami Goud, former minister Dr G. Vijaya Rama Rao, one of the founding members of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Gade Innaiah, former MLC Dilip Kumar, former minister and ex-MP D. Ravindra Naik, former student leader and journalist T.A. Vittal and Jagadish Yadav among others.

“We are going to bring together all leaders and intellectuals who fought for Telangana on a platform and reach out to people. After achieving statehood, we were betrayed. The promise of development of Telangana was not met and only a handful of people benefitted. We fought for true democracy, and instead, a dynastic rule was thrust on us. An emergency like situation has been created, where individual and civil liberties have been robbed and we have a government which is neither accountable nor answerable. The atrocities against Dalits are unabated. Not just common people, even their representatives, MLAs and ministers are treated as secondary citizens by those in power,” the committee members said.

“We will democratically oppose this oppression. We will involve all people across the state in the new movement till we free Telangana of un-democratic forces,” they said, adding, "We will soon come out with our programmes and schedule of events."