The day when KCR won statehood for Telangana

Sixteen years ago, K Chandrashekhar Rao’s fast-unto-death forced the Centre to initiate Telangana Statehood. Observed as Deeksha Divas, his sacrifice ended decades of struggle, united the region, and marked the beginning of a new chapter in Telangana’s history

Hyderabad: Sixteen years ago, it was on December 9 that a determined K Chandrashekhar Rao forced the Congress government at the Centre to listen to him and wrested statehood for Telangana.

For 11 days before that, from November 29, when KCR launched his fast-unto-death, the region was reverberating with the slogan ‘Telangana vachudo KCR sachudo’ (A separate Telangana or KCR dies). The fast, observed by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) as ‘Deeksha Divas’, was the turning point in the entire agitation, a fact acknowledged by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh in his book ‘Old History and new Geography – Bifurcating Andhra Pradesh’.

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“The highest echelons of the government had information that ground situation in Hyderabad was grave and ‘something substantial’ had to be done to retrieve it,” he says in the book, going on to add that KCR’s health was one major factor influencing the decision-making. The decision was taken and by 11.30 pm on December 9, the then Home Minister P Chidambaram announced that the process for a separate State of Telangana would be initiated, just before KCR almost killed himself by starving to end the 58-year-long misery that the people of Telangana went through.

This final chapter in the battle for a separate Telangana had begun two months before that December night, when on October 9, the Supreme Court declared Hyderabad as a free zone, allowing people from across the State (erstwhile Andhra Pradesh) to compete for government jobs. With the declaration snatching away the 70 percent local area reservation in government jobs in Hyderabad for the people of Telangana, KCR had raised his voice, citing the Presidential Order 1975 and GO 610 and insisting that Hyderabad was not a free zone.

The protests against the SC declaration only fuelled the demand for a separate State, and on November 29, KCR, who was in Karimnagar at that time, decided to fast unto death in his hometown of Siddipet.

Though he was arrested by the police under the Congress-led State government, the iron bars in the Khammam Sub Jail where he was remanded in judicial custody did not deter KCR, who launched the fast from prison. On December 3, he was shifted to NIMS in Hyderabad, where the fast continued.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire stoked by KCR spread, and agitations including those by Osmania University students brought the State to a standstill, prompting the Congress-led Centre to ask AP Chief Minister K Rosaiah to convene an all-party meeting on December 8. The next day saw Chidambaram’s statement, thus bringing the fast to an end, and the beginning of a new chapter in India called Telangana.