Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Wednesday said the consultations on the demand for a separate Telangana were still on and it would take time for arriving at a decision.
He also pointed out that the Congress core committee was scheduled to take up the subject on Friday during its meeting here.
While answering a journalist’s question on when a decision was expected from the Congress Core Group, he said he was not the only member of the Congress party’s decision-making body.
“How can I make a comment on the core group’s plan? There is a high command which will take a decision,” he said.
The Andhra Joint Action Committee, led by Sunkara Krishna Murthy, in a petition to Digvijay Singh, Congress general secretary in charge of A.P., wanted creation of a separate Andhra State with the capital to be at a place between Vijayawada and Guntur. The rights and properties of those belonging to the Andhra region and those who wanted to continue living in Hyderabad should be protected and the Centre should provide Rs. 5 lakh crore as grant to the new Andhra State for development of the capital and other infrastructure there, the Union Minister said.
Peddapalli MP and senior Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader G. Vivekanand said that only because of his quitting the Congress, along with Keshava Rao and another MP Manda Jagannath, that the Congress had initiated the firefighting exercise on the issue. “It is a victory for us,” he said.
