Hyderabad: The Group of Ministers’ interaction with leaders of five political parties on Tuesday was a mere formality as they stuck to their stands without budging an inch.
On Hyderabad, parties restated their opposition to making it a Union Territory, and wanted it as a joint capital for a limited time.
The GoM merely heard them out. Interestingly, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao had a 20-minute closed-door meeting with Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde to get to know the mind of the Centre on how it proposes to proceed on the Telangana Bill.
Centre yet to find T solutions
The ongoing consultations by the Centre with representatives of political parties appear to be a formality as it is being undertaken without expecting any concrete outcome.
Interestingly, if the Telugu Desam boycotted the meeting with the Group of Ministers, the Bharatiya Janata Party which attended the deliberations did not spell out what it wanted the Centre to do — to render justice to the people of coastal Andhra and Rayalaseeema in the event of division.
Also read: Andhra Pradesh should be kept united: YSR Congress, CPM
The remaining parties like TRS, Majlis, CPI and CPM stuck to their earlier stand on the state division. The TRS withdrew its earlier approval for joint capital for 10 years and demanded that the term of joint capital should be reduced to five years only.
The BJP, though reiterated its commitment for creation of Telangana state, kept on criticising the Congress for what it described as the haphazard handling of state division. In a veiled threat, it even said that the party’s support to the T Bill can’t be taken for granted and concerns of Seemandhra people should be addressed first.
The BJP was represented by party state president G. Kishan Reddy and party senior leader from Visakhapatnam Dr K. Haribabu.
The BJP and TD adopting similar approach on rendering equal justice to Seemandhra without defining what they meant, gained significance in the backdrop of the two parties working behind curtains for electoral alliance in 2014.
Dr Haribabu blamed the Centre for not providing any material that would have helped the party to spell out its stand on contentious issues like status of Hyderabad and river water sharing.
“We have asked the GoM to provide us data on various issues like revenues, law and order in the wake of conflicting reports in media. To our shock the GoM told us that it is still obtaining such data,”?Dr Haribabu said.
