Telugu Desam Party president N. Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday sought President Pranab Mukherjee’s intervention and direction to the Centre to meet the Joint Action Committees and the stakeholders of Seemandhra and Telangana before proceeding further on bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
In a letter sent to Mr. Mukherjee after the party boycotted the ongoing Group of Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, Mr. Naidu appealed to him to ensure that constitutional provisions and established conventions were followed in bifurcation of State “without leaving it to the whims and fancies of the Congress party”.
He wanted the President to see that the Centre holds a detailed consultation with stakeholders of all the regions on all the contentious issues worrying them and find an amicable solution. Mr. Naidu recalled that he was constrained to approach him personally on September 21 as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not respond to his two letters sent on August 9 and August 28 on the issue of bifurcation. There was no response even to his third letter to Dr. Singh on November 5 when the GoM sought suggestions unmindful of the concerns of the agitating people of Seemandhra.
Contradictory statements
Instead of resolving the contentious issues amicably, inconsistent and contradictory statements were being made by Union Ministers -- P. Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar Shinde and Verappa Moily -- and Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and P.C. Chacko, plunging the State into chaos. Mr. Naidu brought to the notice of the President how people felt the present process of bifurcation was not in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution and conventions like adoption of resolution in the Assembly after broad consultations, as was done in the case of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
He recalled that when AP was formed in 1956, the then Prime Minister took the initiative and ensured that the formation process went off smoothly. But now no such initiative was taken.
The Centre had constituted four committees on Telangana in the last six years but two of them did not submit their reports perhaps owing to the complexity of the issues involved, he said. The Srikrishna panel gave its report but the Centre did not take into account its recommendations before announcing the decision on Telangana. It was surprising to note that much before the Antony Committee gave its report, the Union Cabinet took a decision to go ahead with bifurcation simply based on the Congress Working Committee’s resolution.
