Amid calls by various groups in Telangana to boycott the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee on the contentious statehood issue, the panel will visit Andhra Pradesh on Thursday to discuss with state government officials about infrastructure and other requirements.
The five-member committee, which will be in Hyderabad for two days, is likely to meet Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan besides holding discussions with officials about its requirements.
“This visit is purely an introductory one. The entire committee will travel to Hyderabad and discuss with the state government officials about the facilities we need and other things,” the panel’s Member-Secretary Vinod K Duggal told PTI.
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“The committee also hopes to meet leaders of various political parties informally,” Mr. Duggal, a former Union Home Secretary, said.
He said the committee may also make a courtesy call on the Governor and as this is the first time the panel is meeting in Hyderabad.
The panel is also not averse to visiting other parts of the states, if needed, during future visits.
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The committee will discuss with the government officials requirements in infrastructure and secretarial staff like interpreters, stenographers, recorders, conference rooms and other facilities.
This is the third meeting of the Committee since it was constituted on February 12 by the Centre. The previous meetings were held in New Delhi.
The visit assumes significance in the wake of several pro-Telangana outfits threatening to boycott the committee, saying “it will be a waste of time”.
The panel has been mandated to examine the situation in Andhra Pradesh with reference to the demand for a separate state of Telangana as well as the demand for maintaining the present status of united Andhra Pradesh.
The committee is likely to start the consultation process formally with the stakeholders from the second week of this month and hopes to submit the report well before its December 31, 2010 deadline.
Other members of the committee are Ranbir Singh, vice chancellor of the National Law University (Delhi), Abu Saleh Shariff, senior research fellow in International Food Policy Research Institute (Delhi), and Rabinder Kaur, professor at the department of humanities and social sciences at Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi.