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Justice B N Srikrishna, the head of five member consultative committee on the Telangana state issue, has said that the committee was keen to understand the ground reality and take the opinions of the ordinary people on the Telangana issue.
Justice Srikrishna, who arrived in Hyderabad along with other four members of the committee on maiden visit, told a press conference that the committee will complete its work in the given time frame and will submit its report any time before December 31."We want to look at the ground in order to understand ourselves. We want to take the opinion of the common man", he said.
Facing a barrage of questions from the reporters, Justice Srikrishna, member secretary V K Duggal and other members said that the committee will not have any problem with divergent opinions within a political party. "Let there be double standards, triple standards or a solid stand we will examine it ," Srikrishna said.
The committee members, who later attended a dinner hosted by the governor ESL Narasimhan, said that they were ready to receive the views from the people in any format. "We have already received fifty memorandums", Duggal said.
"Even as we sit year, multiple streams are at work gathering the information. We have hired the services of consultants to compile the information", Duggal said. Pointing out that the historical data right from 1952 was available to the committee and the committee members were in the state to gather the information on socio, economic and other conditions.
When pointed out that some parties and organizations were opposing the committee, Justice Srikrishna said, when it started nobody wanted the committee, "But when they think that something good is being done and that the intention is good, people will come around.
Replying to another question, he said, "We are not bothered with what the Andhra Pradesh government has to say. We want to know what is this agitation is about, why the people want the a separate Telangana and why is there opposition to it. We have to take the view of the common man".
The dinner, held at Raj Bhavan amid tight security, was also attended by the Chief Minister K Rosaiah, leader of opposition N Chandrababu Naidu, TRS President K Chandrasekhar, leaders of the left parties, MIM and Praja Rajyam. Chief Secretary SV Prasad and the Director General of Police Girish Kumar also attended.
Heavy security arrangements have been made outside the Lakeview Guest House where the committee members were staying, to keep the agitators at bay. The committee members had the taste of the opposition in the morning. As soon as they landed at the Shamshabad international airport, a group of pro Telangana lawyers demonstrated against them and police took them in to custody.