By IANS,
Lucknow : On the lines of Telangana, trouble is brewing in Uttar Pradesh where the demand for trifurcation of the the country’s most populous state has been simmering for a long time.
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh was the first to reiterate his demand for a Harit Pradesh (Green State) by carving out the agriculturally rich districts in western Uttar Pradesh.
He was followed by Raja Bundela, who heads the Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha (BMM) that wants a separate Bundelkhand state by merging seven districts from Uttar Pradesh and six from adjoining Madhya Pradesh.
While the demand for the creation of a separate Purvanchal by chopping away a large chunk of eastern districts from Uttar Pradesh was also being raised, it has yet to take any concrete shape.
Both Ajit Singh and Bundela appear to have got re-charged since Thursday, when the central government, apparently succumbing to pressure built by Telangana leader K. Chandrasekhara Rao, announced a process to break up Andhra Pradesh.
“It is time for the government to take concrete steps to concede the long pending demand for a Harit Pradesh,” Ajit Singh told IANS over telephone from New Delhi.
He argued: “Both (Uttar Pradesh) Chief Minister Mayawati and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have over the past publicly favoured our demand for a Harit Pradesh. It is really strange that since taking power, they have been avoiding any debate on the issue.”
Even as Ajit Singh clarified that he has no intention to take the issue to the streets in the near future, he sought to make it loud and clear: “I am not going to sit quiet for long and people of this region are eventually going to rise against the indifference of the two governments.”
Even though Bundela’s approach was similar, there was greater aggression in his voice.
“Bundelkhand has traditionally had its own distinct identity and its unique problems, which successive governments of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have not been able to address,” Bundela told IANS.
Bundela was confident of getting wider support in the sprawling region, where scarcity of water was responsible for perennial drought, triggering suicides by farmers and their families.
“The central and state governments are seized of the issue. This was the reason for the centre to prepare a special economic package for the Bundelkhand region,” he said. “But that was not enough.”
Uttar Pradesh, which elects 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha, was broken up in 2000 when its hill areas became a new state: Uttarakhand.
But some argue that Uttar Pradesh is still too large and populous and that it needs to be split up further for better governance.