Crunch Time for Telangana

India is bracing for more political turmoil with the scheduled release Friday a report on the feasibility of creating a separate state of Telangana out of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

A five-member committee on Telangana statehood, headed by B.N. Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge, is expected to lay out several options with pros and cons in the report.

“The report will be unbiased,” Mr. Srikrishna said at a press conference in New Delhi Tuesday. “It is for the government to think over it and find a solution and it is for the people to accept it.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also has held consultations with senior leaders in New Delhi to outline security measures ahead of the release of the report, which caps a tumultuous year for the statehood cause.

On Feb. 3, the Indian government set up the Srikrishna committee to hold discussions with different political parties on the issue, following a political backlash after Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced last year the creation of a separate state of Telangana, which would include Hyderabad, the current capital of Andhra Pradesh. The concession followed days of violent protests.

The government, however, declined to provide a timeframe for the final resolution to be introduced in the state assembly. Several legislators later quit their posts in support of a separate Telangana. The ruling Congress party’s stance since then has been somewhat fuzzy.

“The party is not against small states,” Congress party spokesman Shakeel Ahmed said Tuesday but declined to comment on when any final decision on Telangana might be made.

In an all-out effort to defuse the volatile situation, the Andhra Pradesh government Tuesday announced the withdrawal of all criminal cases filed in the past year against pro and anti-Telangana protesters. Most were students from Osmania University – the nerve center of the statehood movement.

Several legislators and leaders of political parties, who had demanded the withdrawal of cases against students and other agitators, called off demonstrations following the announcement. But they also have demanded the pullout of paramilitary forces that were deployed last week in the Telangana region, fearing an outbreak of violence after the submission of the report Friday.

Leaders of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi — a political party spearheading the statehood cause – also have threatened to go on hunger strike, a traditional political-pressure tactic in India used by Mahatma Gandhi, if the report was not in favor of creating a Telangana state.

“The report is of no consequence to us; it is one of government’s time-delaying tactics,” K.T. Rama Rao, a senior legislator of Telangana Rashtra Samithi told India Real Time Wednesday. “We will not relent.”

The movement for a separate state of Telangana dates back to 1956 when the Telangana region around Hyderabad was absorbed by the state of Andhra Pradesh as part of a reorganization of India’s states along linguistic lines formulated by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after India gained independence in 1947.

The Telangana region is spread over 10 of the 23 districts that make up Andhra Pradesh. Proponents from the region say Telangana needs to become a separate state because it suffers from high poverty rates and lack of infrastructure after being ignored by current state leaders.

More than 300 cases of suicide by Telangana sympathizers have been reported since protests began in November last year.

Supporters of Telangana say the agitation for a separate state would continue irrespective of the panel’s recommendations.

“If the government fails to introduce the Telangana statehood bill in Parliament’s budget session February next year, the movement will enter a final phase — which is complete shutdown of the region,” says Dileep Konatham, a Telangana activist in Hyderabad.