No going back on Telangana: Congress MP

NEW DELHI - There cannot be a compromise on Telangana, senior Congress leader K. Keshava Rao reaffirmed Wednesday, a day before a meeting of political parties from Andhra Pradesh called by Home Minister P. Chidambaram.

The meeting has been convened to discuss the Srikrishna Committee report on Telangana issue. The report, submitted to the home minister by the panel Dec 30, will be made public after the meeting.

There will be no going back, Rao, member of Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh and frontline Telangana leader, told IANS.

He insisted that party leaders have sworn for the new state in the name of the people who lost their lives in the agitation for Telangana.

Rao also said the party MLAs and MPs from the region have already expressed their desire to resign if the demand is not met.

Rao, who is a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, said that the party leaders were not as much concerned about the report as with what the government intends to do on their demand.

The Telangana leader had led a fast by party MPs for the withdrawal of all police cases registered against students, which was later agreed to by the state government.

Chidambaram has invited eight recognised political parties of Andhra Pradesh Thursday for consultations on the Srikrishna committee’s report.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has said that it will not take part in the meeting.

The Srikrishna Committee was set up in February 2010 to study, among other things, the situation in Andhra Pradesh in the aftermath of the agitation for a separate Telangana state and the counter-protests that virtually crippled the state for weeks.

The committee met over 100 groups, including political parties, intellectuals, politicians and retired bureaucrats and visited all the 23 districts of the state, to ascertain people’s views.