"Now, what happens is in the hands of Parliament ultimately, which means the central government will have to take a view on the matter," said justice B N Srikrishna, chairman of the panel.
The final decision on the Telangana issue has to be taken by Parliament and the Centre, and the committee headed by him would help the government in making up its mind, justice B N Srikrishna, chairman of the panel, said today.
"Now, what happens is in the hands of Parliament ultimately, which means the Central government will have to take a view on the matter. But the view of the local people is a big factor which needs to be considered," he told reporters here.
When asked about Union home minister P Chidambaram's statement in Parliament yesterday that the solution lies not
in Delhi but in Andhra Pradesh, he said, "Frankly, I have not
read the statement, but if the statement is what you are
saying, I assume, he does not want to get into a controversy
when a committee is looking at it and finally is going to
advise the government.
"Now, sitting in Delhi, how are they going to assess it? They won't be able to assess. Therefore, they say these four gentlemen and one lady (all panel members) will go and tell what is the local view, consensus view and tell us what do you think of the whole thing," he said.
Srikrishna said the mission of the panel is to help the government take a decision on the contentious issue.
"Parliament is to decide. Andhra Assembly or Andhra government cannot decide. Ultimately, what is to be done, needs to be done by Parliament. To help the Central government make up its mind, all this exercise is going on," he said.
The committee has so far received a whopping 1,30,000 representations, which included well-researched documents to
simple postcards, Srikrishna said.
"More than 1,30,000 representations have been made. Some of them are well-argued, well-documented research papers.
Some are just postcards playing emotional appeal like we want
Telangana. Nothing specific except we want Telangana."
The multi-member panel would not discard any representation, including postcards, and all of them will be considered, he said.
Abu Saleh Sharif, a member of the committee, said the representations constitute the property of the Central
government and that all of them would be preserved.
The committee members were speaking to reporters after the end of a two-day visit to the Andhra Pradesh capital.
During the visit, the panel members had meetings with intellectuals, writers and other groups from different regions
of the state.
Srikrishna, a retired Supreme Court judge, said the discussions were fruitful and the work of the committee is going on in "full speed".
The committee will have separate meetings with the region-wise groups in ruling Congress, main Opposition Telugu Desam and also Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), among others, next week.
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