Leaders of various parties from Telangana who were huddled at a meeting here expecting the terms of reference of the Srikrishna Committee to be announced at New Delhi on Wednesday decided to adopt a tough stand if the norms went against the interests of separate Telangana.
Talking to reporters after a five-hour meeting at the residence of Rajya Sabha member of Congress K. Keshava Rao, TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao said they had decided to take a tough stance if the terms of reference were not acceptable to them. He said the meeting discussed the strategy to be adopted by parties after the declaration of the terms. However, he refused to share the strategy as it was privy to them.
Earlier, former Congress Minister R. Damodar Reddy and two other MLCs of the party, K.R. Amos and K. Yadav, met Mr. Rao at his residence for an hour and later all of them drove down to Mr. Keshava Rao’s house where they were joined by other leaders of the Congress, TRS and Praja Rajyam. Small Scale Industries Minister D.K. Aruna also turned up towards the end of the meeting.
The TRS chief said they discussed the need to be prepared to take serious steps even if there was a slight deviation on the part of the Central government from its declared stand of December 9 that the “formation of Telangana State will be initiated.”
“We believe formation of the State has been initiated. There is no question of Srikrishna Commission inquiring into whether or not Telangana State should be formed”, Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao said. He also said that the commission should work for the formation of the State within a limited timeframe.
Strategy formulation
Nizamabad MP Madhu Yaskhi Goud said the meeting was aimed at formulating strategies if the terms were favourable or went against them. It also discussed what should be the stand of parties in the coming budget sessions of Assembly and Parliament.
