Cong MPs from non Telanagana regions of AP meet

PTI

Hyderabad, 18 January 2011: The Congress high command has convened a meeting of party MPs from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions in Andhra Pradesh on January 20 to discuss the Telangana issue.

State Congress President D Srinivas and other party leaders today communicated the message from the high command to the MPs that they should be available in Delhi on Thursday afternoon, APCC general secretary R Ananda Bhaskar said.

The Congress Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema are likely to meet senior leaders like Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi.

The meeting with the MPs is part of the consultations the top leadership is holding with the MPs from Andhra Pradesh on the Telangana issue in the wake of the submission of report by the Srikrishna Committee.

 
The meeting with the non-Telangana MPs assumes significance amid reports that the Centre would convene the next meeting of eight recognised political parties from AP before January 26.

The top Congress leadership is likely to firm up its stance on the contentious Telangana issue after the consultation process. The Centre’s meeting with the political parties would be crucial to decide the next course of action on the Telangana issue.

Mukherjee and others held meetings twice earlier with Congress MPs from Telangana who stuck to their demand that steps be taken for formation of separate Telangana at the earliest.

 
In its report to the Centre on January six, the Srikrishna Committee has recommended keeping Andhra Pradesh united with constitutional and statutory measures for empowerment of the Telangana region as "the best way forward" while creating a separate state can be the "second best" option to tackle the statehood demand.

The two are options among the six given by the five-member committee headed by former Supreme Court Judge B N Srikrishna which submitted its report to the Centre last week after holding wide-ranging consultations across Andhra Pradesh since February last year.

The Committee itself found that the other four options -- maintaining status quo, bifurcating the state into Seemandhra and Telangana with Hyderabad as Union Territory and the states having their own capitals, bifurcation into Rayala- Telangana and coastal Andhra regions with Hyderabad as part of Rayala-Telangana and bifurcation into Seemandhra and Telangana with enlarged Hyderabad metropolis as a separate Union Territory -- made by it are not practicable.