Three days ahead of the crucial meeting of eight political parties from Andhra Pradesh convened by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram in New Delhi, hectic parleys are on among the Congress leaders from Telangana and rest of the State.
Congress leaders spent a good part of the day holding meetings to formulate an action plan to effectively articulate their argument in support of or against separate Telangana. Even as the leaders awaited announcement of names of the two representatives, who would attend the Delhi meeting, some Telangana leaders were said to have expressed their reservations over media reports that the central leadership was toying with the idea of nominating Agriculture Minister N. Raghuveera Reddy and Eluru MP K.S. Rao as the delegates.
Senior leaders K. Jana Reddy, R. Damodar Reddy, Basavaraj Saraiah, Gutha Sukhender Reddy and others at a meeting on Saturday discussed the move to draft these two leaders for the New Delhi discussions. After the meeting, these leaders called on APCC president D. Srinivas expressing their reservations against the two names and enquired whether the reports were correct.
The Telangana leaders, who initially thought of going in a big delegation to Delhi ahead of the January 5 meeting, dropped the plan and felt that three or four among them could go. Mr. Srinivas will leave for Delhi on Sunday.
In a related development, legislators from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions are meeting in Assembly on Sunday to deliberate on the strategy to be adopted by their representative at the New Delhi meeting. Government Whip Sake Shailajanath said the meeting would elicit opinion of the legislators on how to proceed further in the meeting.
"We plan to seek opinion of the members as to who should represent the party from the two regions. We will then approach the party president urging him to recommend the names of the leaders backed by the legislators," he added.
Meanwhile, the Andhra and Rayalaseema Ministers are also planning a meeting on Sunday to evolve a common strategy.
