Centre to call all-party meet on T issue soon

The Central Government will in all likelihood convene an all party meeting  as part of its attempts to find an ‘acceptable’ solution to the controversial separate Telangana issue before the Budget Session of Parliament gets underway.

The Budget Session is due to start by end of February and the Centre is keen to ensure that the opposition does not get a chance to disrupt the proceedings on the vexed issue. The Winter Session of Parliament was more or less ‘washed-out’ by the opposition parties which insisted on a Joint Parliamentary Probe into the 2G spectrum scam. According to political watchers, it is understandable that the Centre does not want disruptions in the Budget Session.

Going by the reports emerging from New Delhi, the Union Government will call a meeting of the eight major parties in Andhra Pradesh and discuss the recommendations in the Justice Srikrishna Committee Report.

According to reports doing rounds here in the National Capital, Home Minister P Chidambaram would convene a meeting of the political parties and elicit their views on the Report, a media organization said, quoting a senior government official. The report added that the date of the all-party meeting would be decided after a top-level meeting on Monday.

It may be mentioned here that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Telugu Desam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party boycotted the January 6 all-party Conclave when the Report was handed over before being made public, giving various reasons for skipping the meeting.

The TRS had said that inviting two representatives to the meeting would lead to divergent views being expressed and said that it was ready to participate if the attendees were limited to one per party.

The BJP had said that its stand had also been ‘only bifurcation, no Committee’. It had added that it did not recognize the Srikrishna Committee and termed the report ‘redundant’ even before it was made public.

The Centre is also keen to ensure the participation of all the eight major parties in the state so to discuss the two ‘workable’ options, of the six which were recommended by the Report.