New Dehi, January 08: The issue of constituting a mechanism for the wide ranging consultations promised by the Centre on Telangana is expected to come up on Friday at a meeting of the Congress Core Group headed by party president Sonia Gandhi.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his senior Cabinet colleague, including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony and Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel are also expected to attend the meeting.
TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, who is spearheading the movement for separate Telangana, met Antony on Thursday and discussed the issue.
The Core Group is expected to take stock of the deliberations of the meeting convened by Chidambaram on Tuesday of leaders of eight recognised political parties of Andhra Pradesh and separate meetings he has had in the last two days with leaders of the state.
The Tuesday meeting had as its agenda the mechanism and the road map for consultations and the Core Group will be briefed on its discussions by Chidambaram.
The party and the government are said to be weighing various pros and cons on the mechanism and the implications it would have on the dialogue process.
—Agencies