The central government will, in all likelihood, convene an all-party meeting as part of its attempts to find an acceptable solution to the controversial Telangana issue before the budget session of the Parliament gets underway.
The budget session is due to start by the end of February, and the centre is keen to ensure that the opposition does not get a chance to disrupt the proceedings on the issue. The winter session of the Parliament was more or less washed-out by the opposition parties which insisted on a Joint Parliamentary Probe into the 2G spectrum scam. According to political watchers, it is understandable that the centre does not want disruptions in the budget session.
Going by the reports emerging from New Delhi, the union government will call a meeting of 8 major parties in Andhra Pradesh, and discuss the recommendations in the Justice Srikrishna Committee Report.
According to reports doing rounds here in the national capital, Home Minister P Chidambaram will convene a meeting of the political parties and elicit their views on the report. It is also believed that the date of the all-party meeting would be decided after a top-level meeting today.
It may be mentioned here that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) boycotted the January 6th all-party conclave when the committee report was made public.
The TRS had said that inviting 2 representatives to the meeting would lead to divergent views being expressed, and said that it was ready to participate if the number of attendees was limited to one per party.
The BJP had stated that it did not recognize the Srikrishna Committee, and termed the report redundant even before it was made public.
The centre is also keen to ensure the participation of all the 8 major parties in the state so as to discuss the 2 workable options out of the 6 which were recommended by the report.
Courtesy: INN
filed in:Telangana, TRS, BJP, Justice B N Srikrishna