Telangana stir: Fresh complaints lodged against union ministers, Sonia Gandhi

HYDERABAD: A day after a court ordered the police to probe the charge that Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and his predecessor P Chidambaram "cheated" the people of Telangana with their statements on the statehood issue, two fresh complaints were filed against the union ministers and Congress President Sonia Gandhi in local courts here today.

In a petition filed before the Malkajgiri court of Ranga Reddy district, BJP's State Executive Committee member Satish Agarwal said the Congress had, in its manifesto before the 2004 general elections, promised to carve a separate Telangana state out of Andhra Pradesh.

Even Sonia Gandhi had promised Telangana at a public meeting in Karimnagar district during an election campaign in 2004, he said. But despite the Congress coming to power, announcing a decision on creating a Telangana state was still being prolonged, the BJP leader said.

The Congress leaders gave a commitment on the demand for a Telangana state but the promise has not been fulfilled, he said in the petition and alleged only Sonia Gandhi was responsible for the delay in not granting statehood to the region, which in turn resulted in a spate of suicides there.

Congress MPs and MLAs now support creating a Telangana state, he claimed, and accused Gandhi of delaying an announcement on Telangana. He claimed the delay forces the region's youth to commit suicide and sought the court to issue a direction to the police to register of a case under cheating and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code against the UPA chairperson.

The court will hear the matter tomorrow.