Of the Congress-BJP deal on T

A deal on the Telangana bill was sealed late on Wednesday evening with Congress troubleshooters agreeing to the BJP’s demand that the government make a specific commitment on Seemandhra’s post partition revenue deficit.
The Congress finalized its Telangana strategy after party managers knocked off all unviable options like sending the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Bill back to Lok Sabha with amendments spelling out guarantees for Seemandhra.
BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s insistence that investing the AP governor with powers of law and order for Hyderabad needed a constitutional amendment was a key lever in hectic backstage negotiations over the bill.
Reluctant to take the bill back to LS and aware that a constitutional amendment needs order in the House besides two-thirds majority, Congress proposed that PM Manmohan Singh could spell out the assurances.
BJP leaders, too, knew that any brinksmanship would have to stop short of stalling the Telangana bill as that would prove politically unwise given the party’s longstanding commitment to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
The saffron party felt it had reasons to feel satisfied over its crucial role in formation of Telangana while its batting for the Seemandhra cause, even at a late stage, could keep the door open for a pact with Telugu Desam Party.
The Prime Minister’s declaration that Seemandhra would get special category status along with a promise to make provisions for the “successor state” of AP in the 2014-15 budget were the concessions BJP was looking for.
Given Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s backing to Telangana, her political secretary Ahmed Patel, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and parliamentary affairs ministers Kamal Nath and Rajiv Shukla worked to seal the deal with BJP leader Jaitley and Venkaiah Naidu.
By Thursday morning, discussions between the government and BJP narrowed to modalities to facilitate functioning of Rajya Sabha with the opposition stressing that concessions to Seemandhra be spelt out unambiguously.
By afternoon, home minister Sushil Shinde was able to tell Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader K Chandrasekhar Rao that the bill would be passed despite repeated disruptions in the upper House.
Unlike other Telangana MPs, Rao has been quite calm over the past few days, confident that Congress would need to deliver on Sonia’s commitment. He was also clear that BJP, despite some hard bargaining, would not renege on Telangana.