JayaPrakash Narayan, the founder and the President of Lok Satta Party has said that he will support the demand for separate Rayalaseema state, only if it is for the betterment of the people.
In an interview to The Hindu, he said ‘emotions’ should not rule the debate on the necessity for creation of a separate state of Rayalaseema and that ‘reason’ should prevail.
"It (formation of a new state) shouldn’t be for meeting the end goal of somebody else to become a Chief Minister, the question is whether the people of Rayalaseema would stand to gain. If so, all should support it. My support for the formation of a new state was relative to the twin demands that the Union government agrees to reimburse the revenue deficit of the new state of Rayalaseema with ‘no ifs and buts’ and gives meaningful and long term tax incentives for industries to come up in the Rayalaseema region," he told the newspaper.
The Rayalaseema region comprises four districts - Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor, all drought prone areas.
In the beginning of November, K Venkata Subba Reddy, the president of Rayalaseema Rashtra Samiti (RRS), an outfit floated for a separate state - not unlike the TRS party for Telangana, asked for a Rayalaseema state with four districts of the region, Prakasam and Nellore from Andhra and a few districts from Karnataka and even Tamil Nadu.
"Separate state is the only solution. Successive governments have neglected the region. We demand Union government to carve a separate state by December 2018 with a special package of Rs 10 lakh crore," Reddy demanded, failing which he threatened of a region-wide strike.
Jayaprakash Narayan also told The Hindu that the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh shouldn’t be viewed from an emotional frame of mind but from that of a practical one aimed at the betterment of prospects to all.
This comes a week after the Lok Satta chief came down heavily on the Andhra government and said "There seems to be no way out for the State government which has not been focussing on what needs to be done. Be it the cyclone in Visakhapatnam or Godavari Pushkarams, the short-termism has come through very glaringly and the call money scam is the latest in the list."
Read TNM's full interview with Jayaprakash Narayan here.