Barely a fortnight after he was sacked by the high command, former Maharashtra PCC chief Ranjit Deskhmukh seems all set to force his party to come clear on the Vidarbha issue, just ahead of the crucial Assembly elections.Deshmukh was replaced on June 27 by Prabha Rau, another Maratha leader from Vidarbha, a day after he took on AICC general secretary Vayalar Ravi and organised a meeting of the PCC executive. Ravi had asked Deshmukh to cancel the meeting, but the latter insisted it will be ‘‘inconvenient’’ for those already on their way to the meeting.A day after he was replaced, Deshmukh travelled to Andhra Pradesh and met Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrashekar Rao on June 29.While careful not to indulge in any anti-party activities, Deshmukh has decided to make a benign ‘‘request’’ to all political parties to include the Vidarbha issue in their manifestos for the Assembly elections.A party leader said: ‘‘We are not going to demand statehood for Vidarbha. We are only going to ask political parties to consider the demand, that whatever be the fate of Telangana issue, the same should be the fate of Vidarbha.’’ There are indications that the Telangana issue may be resolved during the Winter Session, after the Maharashtra polls.For this, Deshmukh is going to launch a ‘‘Vidarbha Manthan Yatra’’ to ‘‘sensitise’’ people about the plight of the region. The yatra, not being launched as a Congress function, will begin in Buldana district — the western border of the region — and wind its way up to the eastern tip in Gondia district, bordering Chhattisgarh. Deshmukh will address trade unions, professional associations, student bodies and other party leaders. He is preparing talking points on lack of development projects in Vidarbha, the meagre share it gets in the budget and the time it will take to match up to regions like western Maharashtra.His yatra may force the Congress to specify its stand on the statehood issue during poll campaign. So far, the AICC had been taking care to keep the lid on the Telangana issue, after explaining to the TRS that the matter will be addressed at an ‘‘appropriate time’’.Vidarbha is crucial to Congress, where it holds 27 of the 66 Assembly seats.
