BJP woos TRS on Telangana state

Hyderabad, Sep 17 (UNI) BJP President Rajnath Singh tonight urged the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), an estranged ally of the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to join hands with it to realise the common goal of a separate Telangana state.

The BJP, which had delivered on its promise of forming three new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh while heading the previous NDA Government, was alone in a position to achieve Telangana state, he said while addressing a public meeting here tonight to mark the liberation of Telangana from the ''autocratic'' Nizam Rule.

''We have no enmity with the TRS. We are ready to work jointly with it to achieve a separate state and it is free to pursue its own agenda after the goal is achieved,'' he asserted, recalling that TRS President K Chandrasekar Rao had announced support as and when any private member bill was moved by the BJP.

If the TRS refused to work with the BJP, then it would only mean that they were encashing on the Telangana sentiment only for ''political gains,'' he charged.

He urged the Andhra Pradesh Government to officially celebrate the Telangana Liberation Day taking a cue from neighbouring Maharashtra and Karnataka.

UNI