In what should be the last meeting of the GoM on Telangana, the members - chairman Sushil Kumar Shinde, defence minister A K Antony, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, petroleum minister Veerappa Moily, health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and special invitee V Narayanasamy - cleared the draft bill in just about 20 minutes. The nearly 9,000 amendments sought by members of the Andhra Pradesh legislature were not gone into; in any case, the views and opinion of the Andhra Pradesh assembly, which had last week rejected the draft bill referred to it by the Centre, are not binding on the Union government.
The draft bill expressly states that elections to the newly-created Telangana and residual state of Andhra Pradesh will be held as per delimitation of seats carried out in 2008 for undivided Andhra Pradesh. According to the draft bill, while Telangana will comprise 17 Lok Sabha seats, Seemandhra will account for 25 seats. The SC/ST constituencies in each state will remain as before, and a fresh delimitation exercise will be undertaken once the simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and assembly are over.
The Cabinet, while considering the Telangana draft bill, will also finalize the special package for development of the new capital for Seemandhra. The contours of a a financial package for the residual state of Andhra Pradesh, including the more backward Rayalaseema region, may also be decided.
The government seeks to introduce the Telangana bill in Parliament on Monday. However, with MPs from Seemandhra planning to disrupt Parliament to protest against bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and the BJP resisting any move to suspend them, it may prove a challenge for the government to get the bill cleared in the 12-day session, which also has the interim rail/general budget and six anti-corruption bills listed as priority business.
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