"You (Congress) have repeatedly insulted and betrayed Telangana and spoilt our lives."
After Congress leader P Chidambaram apologised for the loss of lives during the Telangana statehood agitation, BRS MLC K Kavitha on Thursday questioned why senior Congress leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi did not tender an apology, adding that people in Telangana will never forgive Congress for this.
Speaking to ANI, K Kavitha said, "Yesterday, former Union Minister P Chidambaram came to Telangana and apologised for the martyrs of Telangana, who were martyred during the Telangana movement. I want to direct my question to Rahul Gandhi - why are you not apologising? Why is Sonia Gandhi not apologising? Have the decisions been made by only P Chidambaram?"
Demanding an apology from the high command of Congress, K Kavitha said, "If you are coming to Telangana and giving guarantees to the people of Telangana, why are you shying away from apologising to them? Let me tell you this, even if you apologise a thousand times, the people of Telangana will never forget you or never forgive you."
K Kavitha further stated that Congress played with the emotions of people in Telangana by not having a firm stand on the promise of statehood.
"You (Congress) have repeatedly insulted and betrayed Telangana and spoilt our lives. Just because of your flip-flop nature, people have died in Telangana. If Gandhis come and tender an apology to the people of Telangana, even then we can never forgive you. Guarantees are given by Gandhis but apologies are given by some non-decision makers of Congress party. This is unfortunate," she said.
Earlier P Chidambaram tendered an apology saying that creating a state or dividing a state was not child's play and it was done in response to people's movement.
"If in the people's movement, some persons lost their lives in the agitation. We are sorry for that. But you can't hold the (then) Central government responsible for that," he said.
Telangana was formed on June 2, 2014. It was the result of a decade-long movement to create a new state based on cultural factors rather than linguistic ones. Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh.
Telangana is scheduled to go to assembly elections on November 30 and the counting of votes, along with those of four other poll-bound states, has been scheduled for December 3.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)