Hyderabad, January 05: The Congress MPs from Telangana have been summoned by the party high command to be around in Delhi tomorrow, ahead of the allparty meeting convened by Union home minister P Chidambaram on Jan 6.
Party senior leader and Union minister Pranab Mukherjee will confer with them tomorrow at 3 p.m. They are expected to be advised against embarrassing the party with agitations if the Srikrishna Committee verdict goes against formation of a separate Telangana state. Already, some MPs left for Delhi and others are leaving tomorrow morning.
Under pressure from their constituents, the Telangana Congress leaders have been raving and ranting that they would be prepared to quit their positions if the report goes against Telangana. The Congress MPs had already caused enough embarrassment to the party by going on a hunger strike at the New MLA Quarters seeking lifting of cases against students who took part in the Telangana agitation.
Apparently with an intention to prevent a repeat of such agitations or announcements of resignations by them, the party leadership would try to make them see reason in the argument that the Srikrishna Committee’s report is only in the nature of a recommendation and not binding on the Centre.
Meanwhile, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and PCC president D Srinivas will leave for Delhi tomorrow. Kiran Kumar Reddy has been invited for the allparty meeting in the capacity of the chief minister while Srinivas would be around should the need arise for the party to consult him. Meanwhile, Chidambaram, at a news conference in Delhi, said he could not hazard a guess as to how the parties would react to the contents of the Srikrishna committee report and hoped that the TRS, which had announced that it was boycotting the meeting, would change its mind. He also found nothing wrong in inviting two representatives from each party for the meeting. At the last allparty meeting, some parties like the MIM, CPI and CPM had only one opinion to offer though two representatives had attended the meeting, he said in reply to the argument of TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao that the Centre had invited two representatives to encourage presentation of two divergent views and thus defer a decision on Telangana.
–Agencies