Hyderabad, Jan 2: Opposition parties including the Telugu Desam Party, the Praja Rajyam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party came down heavily against Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday for the fluctuating statements issued by the Home Minister were adding fuel to the fire over the Telangana issue.Speaking out against Mr Chidambaram’s opposition to the division of Tamil Nadu state, TDP leaders D Narendra Kumar and B Gopalakrishna Reddy questioned why the Union Home Minister is against division of his home state but was in favour of dividing Andhra Pradesh.
They alleged Mr Chidambaram is ‘vengeful’ because of the speed at which Andhra Pradesh is developing.The TDP leaders claimed that only ‘vested interests’ were the basis for the state’s current turmoil and pointed out that if backwardness was a reason to bifurcate the state then the country should be divided into ‘a thousand small states’.
Meanwhile, an outspoken separate Telangana supporter and TDP politburo member Nagam Janardhana Reddy accused the Home Minister of making statements which ‘lacked consistency’, while senior PRP leader K Kala Venkata Rao alleged that Mr Chidambaram was leading a deep-rooted conspiracy to split the state.Senior BJP leader Ch Vidyasagar Rao accused the Congress of having lacked clarity in its view on the Telangana issue and said Mr Chidambaram's statements on the separate statehood demand were only compounding the confusion.