Kolkata, Oct 5 : Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday said the issue of Telangana statehood is a complex problem and cannot be solved easily, but use of violence to realise the goal should be avoided by any means.

Amid intensification of the agitation- which on its 23rd day now- for a separate Telangana state with the protagonists of the movement moving to Delhi from Hyderabad to put up pressure on the government, Mukherjee, a key minister of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), told NDTV that the "problem is so complex that in so many years it was not resolved."Speaking from his ancestral house in Birbhum district of West Bengal, Mukherjee said: "In formation of Indian states, there was no pattern. There was no pattern how these states were formed over the years and it can be an interesting study." He said there is apprehension of violence and "so we want come what may we have to avoid the violence."He said mass frenzy should be avoided since "violence does not help anybody". Meanwhile, the ongoing stir in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh for a separate state entered its 23rd day on Wednesday, continuing to take a heavy toll on normal life. On Wendesday, several thousand employees of the excise department of the region joined the stir which the activists are calling a "people's strike".Earlier on Monday evening, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met pro-statehood Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) but there was no solution to end the agitation for a separate state with the latter spelling out that the ongoing agitation crippling the region would continue.KCR met the PM and demanded a time frame for the creation of Telanagana.He later told the reporters that the PM did not commit anything and had "failed to instill confidence" in them. His son KT Rama Rao (KTR) said the PM sounded sympathetic to their demands, but could not assure them anything and hence their Gandhian agitation would continue. On Sunday, led by TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, activists of the Telangana Joint Action Committee took their agitation to Rajghat at the national capital memorial of Mahatma Gandhi on his birth anniversary.Joined by other activists, KCR, as Chandrashekhar is popularly known, said they were in Delhi to protest peacefully on the path shown by Gandhiji and to ensure that New Delhi did not go back on its promise to deliver a separate state. KCR said the police has been merciless on the activists protesting in Andhra Pradesh and even their senior leaders are not spared. While the Telangana statehood continued, Union Health Minister and Andhra Pradesh in-charge of Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad submitted a report on the issue of the bifurcation of the state to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday.Azad briefed Sonia Gandhi on the sitaution after his meeting with the leaders and lawmakers of the region.The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) favours a separate Telangana state, while Congress said more consultations are needed. The Telangana region comprise of 10 districts- Adilabad, Hyderabad, Khammam, Karimnagar, Mahbubnagar, Medak, Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Rangareddy, and Warangal.The Srikrishna committee on Telangana submitted its report to the Home Ministry with six possible solutions, in Dec end 2010 which was later made public.The Committee announced that they were recommending keeping the State united as one of the options, but pro-Telangana leaders said the best option from the Sri Krishna committee report is the formation of separate Telangana state with Hyderabad as its capital.