The government has made it clear that it may take up to six weeks for it to take a final call on the issue of a separate Telangana state. It is most likely that a final decision on Telangana would be taken before the Budget Session of Parliament.
The government is all set to hand over a copy of the Srikrishna Committee report to the political parties of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday. Besides, the meeting with the political parties is expected to finalise the date of the next conference over the issue.
According to sources, the government, after giving a copy of the report to the political parties, will be giving them a three-week period to study the report during which the report would also be made available in the public domain so as to encourage discussion and debate on it.
Thereafter, they would be invited for another meeting to enable them to comment on the report and give their inputs. After this exercise, the government may take another three weeks to finally decide on the report based on the inputs given by the political parties and the general public.
But the meeting of the Andhra Pradesh political parties with the Union government on Thursday will not witness the presence of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as they have declared that will not participate in the meet.
The TRS and the BJP, both votaries of a separate Telangana state, have rejected the Centre’s invitation on the ground that only one representative from each party should be asked to take part in the meet. They contend that an invitation for two representatives from one party will invariably lead to two different views as the parties send one representative from Telangana and the other from Seema Andhra.
The TDP has declared that no purpose would be served going all the way to Delhi to receive the report.
Justice Srikrishna, who was tasked to go into the demand for a separate state of Telangana and the demand for keeping the state of Andhra Pradesh united, submitted his report on December 30, 2010. To take it forward, the Union government has convened a meeting on Thursday.