NEW DELHI: The Congress core group, which met here on Friday for the first time after the serial blasts in Mumbai, seemed more worried about the Telangana agitation rather than the terror strikes or the bickering with ally NCP which holds the Maharashtra home portfolio.
Though they did come up for discussion, it was the Telangana issue that dominated the agenda of the Congress top brass.It seems the threat of the T-stir spiraling out of control forced them to look at Andhra Pradesh more intensely. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, sources indicated, briefed the core group headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, on both -- investigation into the terror strikes and intelligence inputs on Telangana.The meeting was also attended by Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, the incharge of party affairs in Andhra Pradesh. His recent remarks in Beijing that no movement on Telangana was possible without concensus and a unanimous resolution in the State Assembly has kicked up a furore in the region. The Congress top brass has little time left to find a way out of the T impasse since the Telangana joint action committee has given a call for a regionwide strike from Aug 1. Sources hinted that “some decision” on separate statehood cannot be kept pending. However, what could be the contours of the decision, which seems to have been discussed at the meeting, was not clear. Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is also said to have spoken at length on the legal aspects and the pros and cons of the Telangana issue. Meanwhile, the Congress stoutly defended Chidambaram, reiterating his claim that “there was no intelligence failure” despite the government’s candid admission that it had no prior intelligence inputs about the blasts in Mumbai.
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