Srikrishna panel to suggest 'optimal solutions'

The five-member Justice BN Srikrishna Committee looking into the demand for separate Telangana will “recommend optimal solutions” after examining a range of solutions suggested to it, in keeping with its mandate, according to VK Duggal, member-secretary of the Committee.

Addressing the media here on Thursday after the committee’s final interaction — in which Congress MPs from coastal Andhra made a case for a united state — Duggal said the committee received a total of 120,000 representations and met with 103 groups, apart from visiting 1,995 villages across the state.

With this, the committee has completed gathering public opinions and will now analyse the representations made to it.

The only pending inputs now were the reports from four technical experts on water- and power-sharing, the status of Hyderabad and on public employment including the implementation of GO 610, Duggal said.

“These reports are expected to be ready by the end of this month so that the committee will have three months to analyse the gathered evidence,” he added. The GO 610 of 1985 concerns repatriation of non-local government employees working in Zones 5 and 6 covering Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts, and appointing local people in those jobs according to a Presidential Order of 1975.

Duggal stressed the committee's intention to prepare “a report that is well-researched and most credible, keeping in mind the well-being of every citizen of the state and also the national implications.”

'UT status to Hyderabad untenable'
Vijayawada MP Lagadapati Rajagopal, who was part of the Congress delegation, said the demand for Union Territory status to Hyderabad was "untenable."

“Hyderabad accounts for 45 per cent of the state's revenues and 90 per cent of the employment outside agriculture. It is untenable to grant a UT status to the city,” he said, pointing out that existing UTs were being turned into states.