Telangana Congress leaders will meet AICC leader Ghulam Nabi Azad in Delhi on Thursday to hold consultations with him on the contentious separate statehood issue.
“The steering committee members are going to Delhi tomorrow morning,” Congress MP G Vivek told PTI in Hyderabad.
The steering committee comprises over 20 members, including MPs and MLAs, Andhra Pradesh Panchayat Raj Minister K. Jana Reddy and party’s Rajya Sabha member K. Keshav Rao.
To a query, Mr. Vivek said the Telangana Congress leaders want the party to go by its manifesto which was favourable to Telangana.
Taking serious exception to certain remarks of Mr. Azad, in-charge of Congress affairs in Andhra Pradesh, the Telangana Congress leaders had earlier refused to accept his invitation to come to Delhi for talks.
Azad had said in Beijing last week that consensus and Assembly resolution are a must for formation of a separate state and that the Telangana issue needs to be started from the scratch.
He has, however, clarified that too much should not read into his comments in Beijing and that some of his comments were distorted.
Asserting that the sensitive Telangana issue could be resolved only through talks, Azad said he would begin a process of consultations with leaders from all three regions of Andhra Pradesh -- Rayalaseema, coastal Andhra and Telangana.
A large delegation of Congress MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other leaders from Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Union Ministers Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and also Mr. Azad in Delhi in the last two days.
Meanwhile, Telangana Congress leaders organised ‘satyagrahas’ across the region in support of statehood demand.
After quitting their posts en masse in support of the Telangana demand earlier this month, the Congress leaders from the region held a two-day fast in Hyderabad to highlight their cause.
Published - July 20, 2011 08:49 pm IST