Hyderabad, January 03: The all party meeting to be convened by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Jan 6 to elicit views on Telangana issue could very likely turn out to be a damp squib with only two parties – the ruling Congress and the Praja Rajyam party (PRP) deciding to attend it.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the BJP – have decided to boycott the meeting, the second being convened by Chidambaram on the T-issue.
The Union home minister in separate letters to eight recognised parties in the state wanted them to depute two representatives to express their views on T at the meeting. While the TRS is opposed to inviting two representatives from each party citing the reason that both the representatives could air different views, the BJP seems to have some feelers regarding the Centre’s likely decision against a separate Telangana.
BJP state unit president G Kishan Reddy felt that eliciting the views of other parties without making Congress’ stand clear on T was not correct. He termed the Srikrishna Committee as useless.
Though the ruling party has decided to attend the meeting, there is not much use of Congress state leaders attending the meeting as they would have to abide by any decision taken by the AICC on the issue. The last time, N Uttam Kumar Reddy and K Sambsiva Rao had represented Telangana and Andhra regions. The Congress may depute the same leaders for the Jan 6 meeting also.
The other major political party, Telugu Desam is also likely to skip the Jan 6 meeting blaming the Congress for not stating its stand on Telangana.
TDP demanded that presidents of all the eight parties should be invited to the meeting so that AICC president Sonia Gandhi too would attend. In such a scenario, TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu would attend the meeting and announce the party’s stand, TDP leaders said. They also said that TDP has stated in its manifesto that it would cooperate with any effort needed constitutionally for the formation of Telangana.
CPI, which demanded a copy of the Srikrishna Committee report before the Jan 6 meeting has reserved its decision whether they would attend or not. MIM is likely to attend, while the CPM’s stand is not clear yet.
Meanwhile, the Osmania University JAC representatives wanted the CPM leaders not to depute any leader for the meeting as they felt that the Centre was once again hatching a conspiracy against Telangana in the name of the all-party meeting. They also objected to the Centre inviting two representatives from each party.
–Agencies–