Around half of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) went to polls on Wednesday. Electors in the other half, including the provincial capital Hyderabad, had pushed the button of their choice on Electronic Voting Machines a week earlier. Within days of the announcement of election results, on May 16, these two parts will be separated from each other and the new, 29th state of India, Telangana, will be formed. All the legal work has been completed by the outgoing government and the date of inception for the new state is set to be June 2, 2014.

Telangana comprises Telugu speaking parts of the former princely state of Hyderabad that was ruled by a Muslim monarch at the time of partition. When India redrew its internal boundaries in 1950s on the basis of mother language, Telangana was merged with Telugu speaking parts of the then Madras state, known as Andhra. The new state was named Andhra Pradesh.

Telangana has been hesitant about the merger from day one and its frustration spilled over into separation movements three times before the last successful round started in 2009.

The bifurcation demand has interesting parallels to the demand of Seraiki province in Pakistan and has played a major role in shaping electoral politics of this fifth most populist state of India.

For the past decade AP had been the Congress stronghold. In the words of an election day editorial of The Times of India: Andhra Pradesh was the pivot on which Congress’s fortunes turned in 2004. In that election every fifth Congress parliamentarian was from the state. The state continued to be the party’s happy hunting grounds in 2009, providing its largest share of parliamentarians.

Congress is the party that accepted the long standing demand of a separate Telangana and led the legal efforts to make it happen. The demand is bitterly opposed in the other half of the state, Andhra, and thus the party obviously suffered a loss there. Its campaign there has been worse than being lacklustre and many of its candidate actually are believed to have given up even before the polling day.

In Andhra region, Telugu Desham Party and the BJP have struck an alliance. Though BJP had voted in favour of the bifurcation when the bill was presented in Lok Sabha in February this year, it easily evades the responsibility for dividing the Telugu land.

The electors in Andhra Pradesh have voted on May 7, for the Lok Sabha and the provincial assembly simultaneously as the tenure of both the assemblies expired at the same time. In most of the other states, provincial elections have been held on different states in recent past.

The Congress has not been able to perform well in its election campaign in Telangana as well. “They missed the opportunity to cash in on the bifurcation and when they did try, it was already too late,” says Ravikanth Reddy, a journalist at the Hyderabad office of the well-known English daily The Hindu. Telangana Rashtria Samithi, the party that was founded on the sole demand of bifurcation and led the recent movement is basking in glory.

“I don’t know much about the details of politics but judging from the point of view of my income the bifurcation will not be helpful,” said the airport taxi driver who is an Urdu speaking Muslim of Hyderabad adding, “the bigger the state, the better the business.”

Telangana strongly feels that region has been left behind as the state capital became the global hub of IT industry with corporations like Facebook, Google, Microsoft made Hyderabad their second home.

But a vast majority of the residents of Telangana, including its around 13 per cent Muslim population, are supportive, and quite emotional, about bifurcation. All India Majlis-i-Ittehadul Muslimeen that had retained its four seats, in the 285 member Andhra Pradesh Assembly, in 2009 elections was initially opposed to the bifurcation but later acceded to the popular demand.

“Bifurcation will in fact help us. The new independent state will have more seats than the region’s share in the joint province. When smaller constituencies will be delimited Muslim pockets will become electorally more significant. We will gain politically from the bifurcation,” said Zaheeruddin Ali Khan, managing editor of Hyderabad’s leading Urdu daily.

Zaheeruddin is also an active social worker and runs many initiatives to support his community. He was among the leading Muslims who were vocal in their support to the Telangana movement. “We must support and be part of whatever helps the interests of local economy. We are part of this society.”

Vijay Burgula, who is a social researcher in Hyderabad, believes that the bifurcation will be beneficial from the governance point of view as well. “The new state will redraw district maps. It is part of the bifurcation plan. The smaller districts will bring government closer to the people and mind it that we are not talking about any small area. Telangana is the size of South Korea both in geographical and population term,” he says.

“More jobs for people of Telangana,” was the brief answer given by Krishank Manne, the firebrand spokesperson of Joint Action Committee of students of Osmania University when I asked him what major benefit will the bifurcation accrue for them. The university will turn hundred in about four years and is graded as one of the country’s premier educational institutions.

It has been the hotbed of Telangana agitation, the eye of the storm, with its students and faculties leading the campaign from the front. The movement’s literature is awash with statistics that show that people of Telangana had a minute share in public sector jobs that is disproportionate to their over 40 per cent share in population.

“Jobs will be for sure the immediate benefit. It is estimated to give Telangana 70,000 new employment opportunities,” says octogenarian Narsing Rao who has a long association with the Communist Party and the Telangana movement. “It will also help the farmers in the Telangana which is an upstream region and has many dams but havs always been denied due share in irrigation water since the rulers favoured the Andhra region.”

The two states will share the capital Hyderabad for ten years as by that time Andhra is expected to build its own at Kurnool. The plan to apportion departments have already been drawn and June 1 will be the last day when the state staff will report to the joint Andhra Pradesh authorities. The promise of more jobs for Telanaga, which figures on top of election campaigns of all parties, is about to be realised. But apparently it is not for the Congress to take the credit and convert it into an easy victory.

The party lost its much popular Chief Minister, YSR Reddy, in a helicopter crash in 2009 months after the present state assembly was elected. His family was later denied the opportunity to become a political dynasty by the Congress central leadership and resultantly his son, wife and brother formed a breakaway YSR Congress.

The party will cut into the vote bank of the Congress. But from a more theoretical perspective the Congress has put at stake more than just a state government in the whole Telangana bifurcation episode.

“It was this party that pioneered the idea of redrawing state boundaries on the basis of linguistic cohesion but have to concede to the other major factors that were at that time swept under the carpet,” says Vijay Burgula who sees Telangana as the first major expression of the fact that the development and governance agenda now is not only instrumental in shaping the political discourse but it is also necessitating redrawing of internal boundaries in many cases.

That may be the beginning of a new adventurous era in the South Asian statecraft.