Hyderabad, March 24 (IANS) Cutting across party lines, leaders from Telangana Thursday demanded prosecution of members of the Srikrishna committee for allegedly hurting the sentiments of people of the region in its report on a separate Telangana state.
Reacting sharply to the 'secret' eighth chapter of the report, Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) said it would take legal action against the five-member panel formed by the central government and headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna.
Leaders of the ruling Congress, opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) called for prosecution of the panel members for allegedly making suggestions to New Delhi to suppress the agitation for a separate state.
A day after the Andhra Pradesh High Court directed the central government to make public the eighth chapter of the report, the Telangana leaders said the panel had lost whatever credibility it had by suggesting that the centre should 'manage' the media and 'counsel' Congress party's public representatives supporting the demand for Telangana.
"The members of the committee should be prosecuted for hurting the sentiments of Telangana people through their false report," senior TDP leader N. Janardhan Reddy told reporters.
He said legal proceedings would be launched against the officials who fed false information to the committee.
The former minister alleged that the committee members had sold out to leaders of Andhra and Rayalaseema regions opposing the demand for Telangana.
Congress legislator Yadav Reddy termed the panel as a "gang of thieves".
"Those suggesting ways to suppress the Telangana movement by managing the media and counselling us are nothing but a gang of thieves," he said.
The Srikrishna committee, which looked into the demands for and against separate Telangana state, submitted its report to the centre in December last year. It was made public Jan 6 but the eighth chapter "law & order and internal security dimensions" was not revealed.
The five-member panel submitted the note to union home ministry in a separate cover.