On the day the Union home ministry released the Srikrishna committee report, members of the Congress party from the Telangana region unambiguously demanded the creation of a separate state of Telangana with Hyderabad as capital.
The Congress leadership has asked its members from Andhra Pradesh to go through the report minutely and then return to put forward their stand. The home ministry has asked all political parties to study the report and then meet again later this month. The date for the next meeting has not been decided.
“Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into Andhra and Telangana, with Hyderabad as its capital, is acceptable. This is the fifth option in the B N Srikrishna committee report and it is acceptable,” said Uttam Kumar Reddy, Congress MLA from the Telangana region. Other members of the pro-Telangana faction of the Congress made a similar demand.
When YS Rajasekhara Reddy was chief minister, there was no question of accepting the demand for Telangana. In fact, the reason given by Congress President Sonia Gandhi at a Congress Working Committee meeting for not accepting the demand was that “the AP chief minister tells me if we accept the demand, the Congress can never come to power in AP again”. The Congress position, therefore, is an unexpected volte-face.
There was no word from Congress members from other parts of AP who attended the meeting. The Union government had invited BJP, TRS, TDP, Congress, Praja Rajyam Party, CPI, CPI(M) and Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen to attend the meeting. Barring BJP, TRS and TDP, all others attended and also agreed to meet again.
Meanwhile, the eight political parties have appealed to people to maintain law and order. Members of the Srikrishna committee had also met the leaders of all parties and asked them to ensure no untoward incident took place once the report was made public. The committee gave the report on December 30.
The BJP and the TRS have reiterated their stand of no delay in creation of a separate Telangana. The two parties alleged the report was nothing but tactics by the Union government to delay the process.
“The committee was only formed to further postpone the issue. A separate state of Telangana must be created and there should not even be a delay of one day,” said Shahnawaz Hussain, BJP spokesperson. He declined to say if the BJP would attend the next meeting.
