Srikrishna committee interacts with people on Telangana

Hyderabad, April 20: Two members of the Justice Srikrishna committee Tuesday interacted with a cross-section of the people in some villages of Andhra Pradesh's Kurnool district to elicit their opinion on the demand for separate statehood to Telangana region.On the second day of their field visit, Abu Saleh Shareef and Ravinder Kaur visited remote villages in Kurnool district of Rayalaseema region. They interacted with farmers, women self-help groups and youth to know their views on the Telangana issue. Assisted by translators, the two members of the committee posed various questions to the people to elicit their opinion. They had Monday visited some villages in Mahabubnagar district of Telangana and interacted with the people. While an overwhelming majority of the people they interacted in Mahabubnagar district wanted a separate Telangana, the opinion in Kurnool district was divided. Shareef, an authority in food security at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and Kaur, a professor of humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, visited some houses in Veldurti Mandal of Kurnool district to meet women and sought their views. In both the districts, they went around the villages, received representations and wanted to know how a separate Telangana state would impact their lives. Unlike in Mahabubnagar district where the committee members were greeted with protests by some pro-Telangana groups, their visit to Kurnool district was a smooth affair. At Kollampally hamlet, the tribals welcomed them in their traditional way. This was the first field visit by the Srikrishna committee, constituted by the central government in February this year to look into the demands for and against separate statehood to Telangana. Kaur told reporters that the committee would visit all parts of the state over the next three months to elicit people's opinion and study their problems. The five-member panel, headed by retired judge of the Supreme Court, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, has so far received over 60,000 representations from various political and non-political groups from all three regions -- Telangana, Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra. The committee last week began consultations with political parties. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) was the first to present its arguments in favour of a separate Telangana state. Actor-turned-politician K. Chiranjeevi's Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), which is opposing the demand, will make its presentation before the committee here Thursday. Though the central government has asked the committee to submit its report by the year-end, the panel is hopeful of completing the process of consultations by the end of July and submit its report before its term ends. The panel was constituted after Andhra Pradesh was rocked by a series of protests for and against a Telangana state following the Dec 9 statement by Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram that the process for formation of Telangana state would be initiated. He had made the statement after an 11-day fast by TRS chief K. Chandrasekhara Rao.
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