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The Telangana Rashtriya Samiti, spearheading the Telangana statehood movement, rejected a fresh appeal by Home Minister P Chidambaram to participate in Thursday's meeting to discuss the Justice Srikrishna report, even as Congress held hectic parleys with its leaders from Andhra Pradesh on ways to deal with the situation.
The Telegu Desam Party and Bharatiya Janata Party will also skip the meeting to be attended by Congress, Praja Rajyam Party, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musilameen, Communist Party of India-Marxist and CPI.
After the meeting, the Justice B N Srikrishna Committee report on the emotive statehood issue will be made public. The TRS rejected a fresh appeal from Chidambaram to attend Thursday's meeting of political parties on the Srikrishna report.
Sources said the party was staying away since Chidambaram had not responded to the objections raised by the party. "Having committed in both houses of parliament for a separate Telangana state, it is better for the Congress to go ahead and deliver its promise of carving out a new state," TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao said.
Congress leaders held several rounds of discussions with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy and leaders from Telangana region through the day. Congress President Sonia Gandhi held consultations with Kiran Reddy for over an hour in the morning and is understood to have discussed the political situation and the likely fallout of the report. "I also do not know what is in the report. Experts have gone into the issue (Telangana) in detail. Let us wait for them to submit the report. Let us see what is in it before making comments," he told reporters at the Andhra Bhawan in New Delhi.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the two Congress leaders, who will represent the party in Thursday's meeting, that it is just to hand over Justice Srikrishna committee report to political parties and that they will get some time to give their opinion on the emotive issue. Later, he also met with MPs and and senior leaders from Telangana and got to know the situation in the region.
Ahmed Patel, the Congress chief's political secretary, was also present at the meeting. After the meeting, the leaders said the Congress high command has always been symphathetic to the cause of a separate Telangana and hoped that a new state will be formed.
Regional differences in the ruling Congress persisted with MP K Sambasiva Rao and MLA Uttam Kumar Reddy, who hail from coastal Andhra and Telangana regions respectively, meeting Mukherjee separately. The two had represented the party during the previous meeting convened by the Centre on the statehood issue last year.
The Andhra chief minister also met with Mukherjee and Chidambaram and is believed to have deliberated on theTelangana report. Andhra Pradesh is awaiting with bated breath for the release of the report, which is understood to have dwelled into the demands for a separate Telangana state as well as a united Andhra Pradesh.