Govt constitutes 5-member expert committee on Telangana

Government on Wednesday constituted a five-member expert committee on Telangana issue headed by former Supreme Court Judge B.N. Srikrishna.

A Home Ministry spokesperson said the committee will hold wide-ranging consultations with all sections of people and different political parties and groups in Andhra Pradesh.

Other members

The other members of the Committee are Prof (Dr) Ranbir Singh, Vice Chancellor, National Law University, Delhi, Dr Abusaleh Shariff, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Delhi, Dr (Ms) Ravinder Kaur, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Delhi and Vinod K Duggal, former Home Secretary, who will also function as its Member Secretary.

The spokesman said the terms and references are being drafted and will be finalised in consultation with the chairman of the Committee and announced shortly.

Spearhead movement

In Hyderabad, Telangana Rashtra Samiti, which has been spearheading the separate statehood movement, said it would wait for the terms of reference of the committee before giving its views on it.

“We are waiting for terms of reference of the committee to know if it is in furtherance to the December 9 statement made by Home Minister P Chidambaram.

“(If it is so), then we can look forward to it. If it is a step back to explore whether to give Telanagana or not then we will not be happy with it.We are demanding a committee for the formation of Telangana within a timeframe,” K.T. Rama Rao, TRS MLA and party president K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s son, told PTI.

Last week, Mr. Chidambaram had said the committee to examine the demand for separate Telangana will be announced shortly.

Mr. Chidambaram, in the meeting with political parties from Andhra Pradesh on January 5, had said that its agenda was to “deliberate on the mechanism and lay down a road map for consultations” on the Telangana issue.

The meeting followed Mr. Chidambaram’s statement on December 23 last year when the government had put on the back burner the formation of the separate state for which it had on December 9 promised to initiate the formation process.