All-party meet convened to share Srikrishna report: Congress
By IANSWednesday, January 5, 2011
NEW DELHI - With its leaders from Telangana and other regions of Andhra Pradesh having different views on Telangana, Congress central leadership Wednesday said the all-party meeting called by Home Minister P. Chidambaram was only aimed at sharing the Srikrishna report and parties will get time to give their opinion on the issue.
Chidambaram has called a meeting of eight parties from the state for consultations before making public the report of the Srikrishna committee, which looked into the demands for and against a separate Telangana state.
The five-member panel headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna submitted its report to Chidambaram Dec 30.
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, party MP K. Sambasiva Rao and state legislator Uttam Kumar Reddy, who hail from coastal Andhra and Telangana regions, had separate meetings with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The two leaders are likely to represent the Congress at the all-party meeting. They said Mukherjee told them that meeting has been convened to hand over the report to political parties who will get time to go through it. They said Mukherjee has told them that there would be another meeting of political parties in about three weeks to discuss the report.
Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily, who is party in-charge of Andhra Pradesh, was also present during the meetings.
The Congress in Andhra Pradesh is virtually divided on regional lines on the ticklish issue of statehood. Party sources said that the leadership was keen to send a message of dealing with the emotive issue in an even handed manner without annoying any section of opinion in the state which has contributed handsomely to the Congress tally in the last two Lok Sabha polls.
The Srikrishna committee was set up in February to study, among other things, the situation in Andhra Pradesh following protests for a separate Telangana state and the counter-protests that paralysed the state.
The committee met over 100 groups including political parties, intellectuals, politicians and retired bureaucrats and visited all the 23 districts of the state.
