Early Telangana protests

Early Telangana protests (1969 to 1985)

1969: This year saw the first of the protests from the Telangana region. Some students protested "implementation of the safe guards from Andhra Pradesh" while some protested for a "Separate Telangana". The local newspaper Indian Express reported that the latter group were dominant.According to the 19 January 1969 edition of The Indian Express, the agitation turned violent when a crowd attempted to set fire to a sub-inspector's residence. 17 were injured in Police firing.Discussions about the promised safe-gaurds were held. The Telangana Regional Committee was, however, not fully convinced of the outcome.This agitation was met by a counter agitation by the Andhra students accusing the transfer Andhra employees as a discrimination between one region and the other. The transfers were eventually challenged in the high-court.

The army had to be called in. After several days of talks with leaders of both regions, on 12 April 1969, Prime minister came up with an eight-point plan.Telangana leaders rejected the plan and protests continued under the leadership of newly formed political party Telangana Praja Samithi in 1969 asking for the formation of Telangana. Under the Mulki rules in force at the time, anyone who had lived in Hyderabad for 15 years was considered a local, and was thus eligible for certain government posts.

1972: When the Supreme Court upheld the Mulki rules the Jai Andhra movement, with the aim of re-forming a separate state of Andhra, was started in Coastal Andhra and Rayalseema regions. The movement lasted for 110 days. The Supreme Court upheld the implementation of Mulki rules. The people from the Andhra region viewed the Milki rules as "treating them like aliens in their own land".

1973: a political settlement was reached with the Government of India with a Six-Point Formula. It was agreed upon by the leaders of the two regions to prevent any recurrenceof such agitations in the future. To avoid legal problems, constitution was amended (32nd amendment) to give the legal sanctity to the Six-point formula.

In 1985, when Telangana employees complained about the violations to six point formula, government enacted government order 610 (GO 610) to correct the violations in recruitment. As Telangana people complained about non implementation of GO 610, in 2001, government constituted Girglani commission to look into violations. Section 18.1.9 of Girglani report said "In the various representations to the government and in the Press a figure ranging 40,000 to 58,000 of non-locals working in zones V and VI is being given as those who are working in violation of Presidential Order. The statistical part of non-locals and locals has been examined by the Commission and it will be seen that the percentage of non-locals in the zones V and VI is negligible and far below the sealing of 20 percent. Therefore on statistical aspect there is no question of any action or implementation of the G.O.

Telangana protests (1997 to 2010)

In 1997, the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed a resolution seeking a separate Telangana.

In 2000, Congress party MLAs from the Telangana region who supported a separate Telangana state formed the Telangana Congress Legislators Forum and submitted momorandum to their president Sonia Gandhi requesting the support the Telangana state.

A new party called Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), led by Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), was formed in April 2001 with the single-point agenda of creating a separate Telangana state with Hyderabad as its capital.

In 2001, the Congress Working Committee sent a resolution to the NDA government for constituting a second SRC to look into the Telangana state demand. This was rejected by then union home minister L.K. Advani citing that smaller states were neither viable nor conducive to the integrity of the country.

In April 2002, Advani wrote a letter to MP A. Narendra rejecting a proposal to create Telangana state explaining that "regional disparities in economic development could be tackled through planning and efficient use of available resources". He said that the NDA government, therefore, does "not propose creation of a separate state of Telangana"However in 2012, Advani said that if their then partner TDP cooperated during NDA tenure, a separate state of Telangana could have been created.This was confirmed by the President of the TDP, Chandrababu Naidu, on 1 September 2013 in a public meeting.

In the run-up to the 2004 Assembly & Parliament elections, then Union Home Minister L. K. Advani ruled out inclusion of Telangana in the NDA agenda and said "Unless there is consensus among all political parties in the state and unless that consensus is reflected in a resolution of the state Assembly, we don’t propose to include it in the NDA agenda"

For these elections, the Congress party and the TRS forged an electoral alliance in the Telangana region to consider the demand of separate Telangana State.Congress came to power in the state and formed a coalition government at the centre; TRS joined the coalition after the common minimum program of the coalition government included that the demand for separate Telangana state will be considered after due consultations and consensus.

In February 2009 the state government declared that it had no objection, in principle, to the formation of separate Telangana and that the time had come to move forward decisively on this issue. To resolve related issues, the government constituted a joint house committee.In the lead-up to the 2009 General Elections in India, all the major parties in Andhra Pradesh supported the formation of Telangana.

In the 2009 elections TRS managed to win only 10 assembly seats out of the 45 it contested and only 2 MP seats. Some media analysts thought Telangana sentiment faded.

Within few months of getting re-elected as popular CM, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) died in a helicopter crash in September 2009. This resulted in a leadership crisis within the Congress party and also created a political vacuum in the state.During this time, TRS president K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) raised his pitch for the separate state. On 29 November 2009, he started a fast-unto-death, demanding that the Congress party introduce a Telangana bill in Parliament.Student organisations, employee unions, and various organisations joined the movement.General strikes shut down Telangana on 6 and 7 December.In an all party meeting called by the state government on the night of 7 December to discuss regarding KCR's fast and how to handle it,all major Opposition parties extended their support for a separate state for Telangana. The state Congress and its ally Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen have left it to the Congress high command to take a final decision. Minutes of the meeting were faxed to Congress high command.