KCR twists T-line on jobs for locals

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti president, Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao, turned the T-line upside down, stating that everyone born in Telangana would have all rights to government jobs when the region gets statehood.

The new diktat means that a child of a person belonging to either Andhra or Rayalaseema will be considered a Telanganite if he is born in the region.

This is seen as a deviation from the stand of pro-statehood parties which defined a Telanganite as a person who belongs to the region.

Faced with protests from pro-statehood parties, Mr Rao said he would “give his life” to support his stand.

Participating in a TV debate late on Saturday night, Mr Rao declared that those born in Telangana would have all rights to jobs and political posts in the new state. He called those opposing his new view as “fools” and “idiots”.

Telangana lawyers and different joint action committees were not amused by this sudden deviation by the TRS chief.

Some statehood units have threatened to stage protests to force Mr Rao to abandon his stand.

During their recent agitation, Telangana lawyers had been demanding that the government remove some names from the list of Telangana law officers, alleging that they had come from other regions long back and had settled here, and therefore could not be treated as Telangana locals.

This had started a debate on who is an “original” Telanganite, and who is not.