Uttam remains Cong T choice for Delhi meet

Ignoring the opposition from a section of senior leaders that Huzurnagar MLA N Uttam Kumar Reddy’s credentials to represent Telangana were suspect, PCC president D Srinivas on Monday announced that Uttam and Eluru MP K S Rao would represent the party in the all-party meeting convened by Union home minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi on January 6. After a meeting with both the MLA and MP, Srinivas told the media that Uttam and Rao would represent the Congress in the meeting convened to discuss the possible fallout of the Justice Srikrishna committee report submitted to the home minister on December 30.
Because of his alleged proximity to chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and his moderate stand on the separate state issue, several senior leaders from the region are said to have opposed the inclusion of Uttam Kumar in the two-member team. According to sources, Uttam too is said to have expressed his unwillingness to go to Delhi to the PCC president Srinivas on the grounds that his T-credentials were being questioned by some party colleagues. However, Srinivas urged him not to get disheartened by the view of some leaders and that the majority were with him. Similarly, K S Rao also had a separate meeting with the PCC president.
Later, Srinivas asked party leaders to refrain from making comments in their individual capacity on the contents of the report of the Justice Srikrishna committee. “Opinion should be addressed only on party fora,” he said and claimed that the Jan 6 meeting has been convened only to make the report public. Meanwhile, talking to the media, Uttam Kumar Reddy said he was second to none in his commitment to Telangana and his performance when he was heading the assembly committee on the implementation of GO 610 was applauded by one and all. “I am not attending the meeting on my own accord. It is the party which asked me to represent it in the meeting,” he said adding that some of his colleagues were reading too much into the meeting on January 6.