A day after constituting a five-member committee on the Telangana issue, the government on Thursday moved ahead with the exercise of finalising its terms of reference.
Member-secretary of the newly-formed committee, Vinod K. Duggal, held discussions with Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Home Secretary Gopal K. Pillai. During the half-an-hour meeting, Mr. Duggal, a former Home Secretary and now member of the Centre-State Commission, discussed the broad contours of the terms of reference, sources in the Home Ministry said.
The sources said Mr. Duggal would travel to Mumbai to discuss the terms with committee chairman Justice B.N. Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge.
Indications are that the terms of reference might be announced by this weekend. The Home Secretary said on Wednesday that they were being drafted and would be finalised in consultation with the chairman of the committee.
The committee will hold wide-ranging consultations with all sections of society and all political parties and groups in Andhra Pradesh.
The other members of the committee are: Professor (Dr.) Ranbir Singh, Vice-Chancellor, National Law University, Delhi; Dr. Abusaleh Shariff, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Delhi; and Dr. (Ms.) Ravinder Kaur, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi.
