Finally! I have finished reading the 505-page Srikrishna Committee Report on Telengana issue (pdf). Above all, I realized two things- Justice Srikrishna is no John Grisham and I hate Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). After wading through hundreds of pages documenting the ethno-religious and social details of the region I find out that the juicy part, internal security considerations, has been censored out, courtesy MHA. What am I supposed to read if not the Naxal angle?
Surprisingly, despite hardly mentioning Naxalism in its report (minus the censored security considerations) the committee report scares the bejesus out of anyone thinking that Naxalism wouldn’t be an issue in the state formation. And it is not the only one. Security agencies (read MHA) have already suggested to the government that creating Telengana will help Naxalism rise again. So the question is, whether Naxalism is a threat for Telengana or merely a bureaucratic excuse for the government to do their favorite thing in the whole world – maintain status quo.