Telangana report to be made public on January 6

Home Minister P Chidambaram has convened a meeting of the eight recognised political parties of Andhra Pradesh on January 6 to discuss the report of the panel headed by Justice (Retd) Srikrishna. Chidambaram said the report will be made public immediately after the meeting.

“The Government will consider the report and begin the process of consultation with all political parties before taking appropriate decisions. That is the only way in a democracy and those who respect democracy must also respect the processes of democracy,” Chidambaram said after receiving the report from Justice Srikrishna. The Srikrishna Committee is understood to have suggested several options and enlisted the merits and demerits of each one of those in addition to recommending roadmaps to evolve consensus to resolve the contentious issue.

Chidambaram said the report would be carefully studied by the officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs and would be shared with other ministries concerned in the Union Government. The Government would first share the report with the eight recognised political parties of Andhra Pradesh, before making it public.

The Congress, which leads the ruling UPA at the Centre and rules Andhra Pradesh, said that it was not opposed to reorganisation of the states but would favour national consensus before any such attempt was made. The BJP said it would like to see the new State of Telangana coming to reality.

“We are eagerly looking forward to formation of a separate Telangana State,” Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj posted in the social networking website Twitter.

In the wake of political unrest in Andhra Pradesh over the demand for bifurcating the State and creating the new State of Telangana, the Government had on February 3 this year constituted the five-member committee headed by Justice Srikrishna, a retired judge of the Supreme Court.

“The Committee was able to consult all sections of the people and all political parties and groups in Andhra Pradesh,” said Chidambaram. “We are glad that 2010 was a peaceful year in Andhra Pradesh and it is our fervent desire that peace will be maintained in future too.”

The Home Minister said the Centre has deployed paramilitary forces in Andhra Pradesh just as a precautionary measure. “Let me assure….the security forces will remain in the force headquarters or police stations as a reserve force. As long as the people and the political parties and groups take upon themselves the responsibility of maintaining law and order, we do not foresee the need to actually deploy the security forces,” added Chidambaram. 

He urged the media to communicate the contents of the report – after it was made public on January 6 – to “viewers and readers in a fair, impartial and balanced way and promote sober and mature debate”. He said the debates would help the government to take appropriate decisions on the report.