PRP Assures Telangana if voted to power

The Praja Rajyam Party found itself in a piquant situation on Friday when its president K. Chiranjeevi had to clarify that spokesman Katti Padma Rao’s statement that the party was in favour of a separate Telangana was the official policy. On Friday afternoon, Mr. Rao categorically said at a press conference that if voted to power, it would move a resolution in the Assembly favouring a separate Telangana State. He was only defending the Yuva Rajyam (Youth Wing of Praja Rajyam) president Pawan Kalyan who drew flak recently when he asked the Government to clear its stand on Telangana. When repeatedly asked about how the party could go about the process of facilitating the formation of a separate State, he said they would definitely do what they could on the matter, depending on the majority they got in the general elections, at the State and the Centre. Later, when presspersons asked Praja Rajyam president K. Chiranjeevi to expand on his party’s standpoint on the issue, he said he had all along been saying he would do whatever the people wanted. When asked again, he said the terminology used by different leaders in the same leader could be different and that it did not mean any distortion in the party’s stand. When asked if Mr. Pawan Kalyan’s criticism and the manner in which he hit out at Congress leaders, meant the Praja Rajyam was giving the go-by to ‘Gandhigiri’, Mr. Chiranjeevi said it was not so. “He is young and enthusiastic. We should only go by what he meant”, he added.