Chidambaram's Telangana meet heads for another row

Thursday's crucial meeting on Telangana to discuss the Shri Krishna Commission report is expected to be mired in another controversy with some political parties deciding to boycott it.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram who was handed over a copy of the report last week had called for a meeting of all political parties from Andhra Pradesh on Thursday to discuss the contents of the report and come out with a plan on how to implement it.

The Telangana Rastriya Samithi has decided to boycott the meeting since it feels the home ministry's decision to ask parties to call for two representatives from each party is not correct.

TRS general secretary Subhash Reddy confirmed to rediff.com that they would not attend the meeting since it makes no sense.

"We had written to Chidambaram expressing this earlier and on Tuesday he replied asking us to be a part of the meeting. In his letter he states that they want an amicable solution to the problem and hence the TRS should be present," Reddy said.

"However our argument is that why are they insisting that there should be two representatives from each party? Obviously other parties who are opposing Telangana will send one representative from the region and another from the Andhra region. The representative from Andhra will obviously oppose the movement and this would mean that there is no solution to the problem. The TRS is not interested in discussing anything but would only want that Telangana should be granted," he added.

The Telugu Desam Party on the other hand too has decided not to attend the meeting.

Although they have not made an official announcement yet, the party leaders have said that they would go along with the TRS on this.

Currently a meeting of the TDP leaders is on to chalk out the future course of action on this subject. Sources in the party say that they would go ahead with their decision to boycott the meeting at New Delhi, but will make a formal announcement later on Wednesday afternoon.

The Congress, meanwhile, will send its representatives and be part of the meeting. The Praja Rajyam Party which had at first sent out signals that it may not be part of the meeting has however decided to take part in it now.

PRP spokesperson Vikram said that only one representative of the party would take part in the meeting and they would not be boycotting it.