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Accusing Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhara
Rao of defusing the Telangana movement, revolutionary balladeer
Gaddar Friday said he would float a party to achieve separate
statehood through a people's struggle.
The Maoist sympathiser told reporters that this would not be a mere
vote-based party like the TRS but would try to achieve its goal
through a people's struggle, including a cultural campaign.
Gaddar said he would make an announcement after his surgery to
remove a bullet from his body.
Gaddar, who had actively participated in the Telangana movement of
1969, said doctors were likely to operate on him to remove a bullet
from his lower abdomen, which hit him during an assassination
attempt here in 1997. The singer had blamed police for the attack.
"I will call a meeting of all pro-Telangana intellectuals, poets,
singers and activists before formally launching the party," he said.
He apologised to the people of the region for sharing a dais with
Chandrasekhara Rao, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani
and former Andhra Pradesh home minister T. Devender Goud.
"Inviting Advani to a dharna in Delhi, inviting Goud who suppressed
the revolutionary movement as home minister, at martyrs' memorial
and sharing dais with Chandrasekhara Rao at a meeting were my
mistakes and I apologise to people for the same."
Gaddar, who came out of month-long hiding following "false" cases
being booked against him by the police, confirmed that several
present and former TRS leaders approached him with a request to
launch a party.
"People of Telangana voted for the Congress party which refused to
give separate state. The party always maintained the same stand. We
all should take lessons from this," he added.
He said while former chief minister K. Chenna Reddy abruptly ended
the Telangana movement in early 1970s when it was near its goal,
Chandrasekhara Rao defused the movement.
Chandrasekhara Rao had floated the TRS in 2000 to revive the
three-decade-old movement for separate statehood to Telangana,
comprising 10 districts including Hyderabad.
In the just concluded elections, TRS could win only 10 assembly and
two Lok Sabha seats in the region.
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