Thaindian News

New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) The Congress core group met Friday evening and discussed the security situation in the country in the aftermath of Wednesday’s Mumbai blasts and the developments in Telangana.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram briefed the meeting about the Mumbai blasts and the security precautions taken in Mumbai and other states, party sources said.

The meeting discussed the Mumbai blasts in which 17 people died and 131 were injured and attempts by the opposition parties, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to extract political mileage out of the “common security issue”, a Congress leader, who declined to be identified, told IANS.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and key ministers and party leaders attended the meeting, held at Singh’s 7, Race Course Road residence in the evening.

Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi had visited Mumbai Thursday and met many of the injured and the families of those killed.

Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is also Congress general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh, was specially called to the meeting. Party sources said Azad briefed the meeting about the stir-hit Telangana, from where most of the Congress lawmakers - MPs, MLAs and MLCs - have submitted their resignations to their respective presiding officers to press the demand for a separate state.

Congress leaders feel the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to make political capital out of the Mumbai attack. Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi had vehemently criticised senior BJP leader L.K. Advani’s statement at the blast site that the attack happened because of the “wrong policies” adopted by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The core group meeting also assessed the political conditions in the wake of the reshuffle of the 25-month-old UPA II government, party sources said.