The UPA government today formed its much-awaited committee on the issue of Telangana placing the issue in cold storage for an indefinite period.
Delicately balancing itself between strong pressures in favour of a separate Telangana and an unified Andhra Pradesh, the Home ministry’s announcement doesn’t have any mention of the proposed state of Telangana. It simply says, “Pursuant to the statements made on December 9, 2009 and December 23, 2009 and the meeting with the eight recognised political parties of Andhra Pradesh on January 5, 2010, the Government of India has constituted the following committee to hold wide-ranging consultations with all sections of the people and all political parties and groups in Andhra Pradesh.”
Headed by retd Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna, the 5-member committee has Ranbir Singh (Vice-Chancellor, National Law University), Abusaleh Shariff (Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute) and Ravinder Kaur, (Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi). Former home secretary Vinod K Duggal will be the Member-Secretary of the committee.
While Home Minister P Chidambaram announced the committee, its terms of reference have not been finalised yet. The Home Ministry release says, “The terms of reference are being drafted and will be finalised in consultation with the chairman and announced shortly.”
Major political players in Andhra Pradeshresponded in different voices to this development. Joint Action Committee (JAC) convener C Kodandaram, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA N Janardhan Reddy, and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leader K T Rama Rao—all said they were waiting for the terms of reference of the committee to ascertain if it complied with the December 9 statement made by Chidambaram.
But another section of the TDP and Cheeranjivi’s Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) slammed Chidambaram for efforts to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. “It is a conspiracy by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Law Minister M Veerappa Moily to disintegrate Andhra Pradesh, the largest state in South India. Moreover, the committee has no sanctity as it has no approval of the Union Cabinet,” PRP political affairs committee member Kotagiri Vidyadhara Rao said in Hyderabad.
Senior TDP leader and former minister S Chandramohan Reddy also said this committee would “raise doubts” as there were demands for creating many other states. “Chidambaram clearly favoured creation of smaller states in his book ‘A View From the Outside’. He is acting accordingly in the case of Andhra Pradesh with a vested interest to benefit his native Tamil Nadu,” Reddy said.
The BJP, meanwhile, today rejected the committee “lock, stock and barrel” terming this move as a “delaying tactic and a futile exercise as no time-frame or terms of reference had been spelt out”.
