The Justice Srikrishna commission has recommended keeping the state of Andhra Pradesh united by instituting statutory and constitutional measures for empowering and developing the Telangana region as the best way forward. As the second-best option, the committee suggests splitting Andhra Pradesh into a Telangana state with Hyderabad as its capital and a Seemandhra state with a new capital.
Playing safe, the commission has suggested a total of six different options to resolve the demand for a Telangana state. Union home minister P Chidambaram?s appeal to political parties to respect the report had few takers. Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) which led the agitation for a new state was quick to reject the report, with its chief K Chandrashekhara Rao declaring that ?nothing short of a separate state of Telengana will satisfy us.?
Congress leaders from Telangana too expressed dissatisfaction with the report, with Nizamabad MP Madhu Goud Yaskhi saying resigning from their posts could be one option.
The commission said the other four options ? status quo, bifurcation into Seemandhra and Telangana with Hyderabad as a Union Territory and the states having their own capitals, bifurcation into Rayala-Telangana and coastal Andhra regions with Hyderabad as part of Rayala-Telangana and bifurcation into Seemandhra and Telangana with enlarged Hyderabad metropolis as a Union Territory were not practical.
The report buttresses the case for of a united Andhra Pradesh by suggesting the creation of a statutorily-empowered Telangana Regional Council to be headed by an MLA with cabinet rank. ?The Committee considers that unity is in the best interest of all three regions of the state as internal partitions would not be conducive to providing sustainable solutions to the issues at hand,? says the report.
? In this option, it is proposed to keep the state united and provide constitutional/statutory measures to address the core socio-economic concerns about development of Telangana region. This can be done through the establishment of a statutory and empowered Telangana Regional Council with adequate transfer of funds, functions and functionaries in keeping with the spirit of Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1956,? it says.
The report says that this option carries ?the national goal of deepening and extending decentralisation and of sustaining inclusive growth.?
The second option of carving out Telangana and Seemandhra with Hyderabad as the capital of Telangana, would, in the committee’s opinion, commit the country to a division of the state and the creation of a new capital. The implications are that if earlier agitations are anything to go by, this decision will give rise to serious and violent agitations in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, where the backlash will be immediate with the key issues being Hyderabad and sharing of water and irrigation resources.
? There will be every likelihood of pressure being put by the general public on the leaders of the political parties of Seemandhra region (MLAs/MLCs/MPs) to resign and fight for a united Andhra Pradesh,? the report says. The report said the agitation for the separation of Rayalaseema from coastal Andhra may also start taking shape sooner than expected.