BJP MP Tejasvi Surya on Thursday likened the bifurcation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh into two states to a situation “much worse than the partition of India”, which created an uproar in Telangana. Speaking during the special session of Parliament on the demarcation bill, the BJP MP said the formation of Telangana was done in a “worse way” than the British during the partition of India.
Tejasvi was opposing the ‘hybrid model’ proposed by Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on delimitation and expansion of Lok Sabha seats. Tejasvi argued that the proposal violated the principle of “one person, one vote, one value” and criticized the Congress for its “politics of postponement”.
“The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government bifurcated the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were divided in a worse way than what the British did during the partition of India and Pakistan. This is the kind of legacy they left,” Suriya said.
Following these remarks, both the Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi Party reacted sharply and demanded the disqualification of the BJP MP for insulting Parliament which had passed the legislation to form the state of Telangana.
Poonam Prabhakar, Telangana’s backward classes minister, told reporters that Suriya’s remarks were detrimental to democratic values. He demanded that the comments be deleted from the records of the Lok Sabha and went so far as to call for the cancellation of Suriya’s membership in the House of Representatives.
In a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Prabhakar said that likening the partition of India to the partition of Andhra Pradesh was not only factually unacceptable but also highly insensitive and inappropriate in the context of parliamentary discourse.
“The formation of Telangana was the result of a democratic and constitutional process, reflecting the legitimate aspirations of its people. Equating it with the painful and violent partition of the nation diminishes the sanctity of that process and ignores the sentiments of the people of Telangana,” he said. The MP demanded an unconditional apology to the House and the people of Telangana.
Senior BRS leader and former minister T Harish Rao also criticized Surya, demanding an apology for comparing the formation of Telangana with the partition of India and Pakistan. He described the remarks as an insult to the people of Telangana in Parliament.
Rao questioned the BJP’s stance, asking why the party supported the partition of Andhra Pradesh if the process was seen as akin to partition between India and Pakistan. He emphasized that the creation of Telangana was the result of decades of struggle and sacrifices by students, youth, employees and the public.
However, BJP state president N Ramachander Rao ignored the allegations and said that the BRS and the Congress are unnecessarily distorting and distorting the statements made by Tejaswi Surya.
The MP’s statements need to be understood in the proper context in which they were made. “Suriya was only commenting on the way the Congress handled the issue of partition of Andhra Pradesh, as compared to the formation of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh during the Vajpayee regime in a peaceful manner,” Rao said.
He said that Telangana was shaped because of the continuous support given by the BJP. “These are facts that Congress cannot deny, distort or escape from. They have also revealed that BRS and Congress are one and the same,” the state BJP chief said.
