Minister held as T-stir turns ugly
The Telangana employees general strike turned ugly on Monday following series of incidents in the state capital, including the agitators manhandling a senior transport official and an advocate who had filed “anti-Telangana” cases, and the police arresting a minister from the region.
Infrastructure minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, Congress MPs S. Rajaiah and P. Prabhakar, besides former minister J. Krishna Rao, all from the Congress, and TRS leader K.T. Rama Rao, were arrested for squatting on the road along with hundreds of electricity employees near Vidyut Soudha, the power department headquarters at Somajiguda in Hyderabad. Traffic went haywire as the agitation on the busy Khairatabad-Panjagutta road went on for more than an hour. The leaders were demand uninterrupted supply of power for seven horus to farmers in the Telangana region. Their allegation is that the Telangana farmers are being shortchanged, even as the state battles a growing electricity deficit due to the strike. The police released them in the evening.
Meanwhile, the Telangana Joint Action Committee has announced its next series of agitations. These include a three-day rail roko across Telangana from October 9 to 11, which is expected to bring all train traffic to a halt as had happened late last week. Also included in the agitations are a Hyderabad rasta roko on September 28 and Hyderabad bandh on September 30.
Earlier, Mr Venkat Reddy, the only minister who is keeping himself away from office after submitting his resignation to the Assembly, had laid siege of the chief minister’s office in the Secretariat for more than two hours. He joined the protest programme of the T-employees in the seat of power who joined the general strike from Monday. “It is a shame to work in a Cabinet headed by CM N. Kiran Kumar Reddy who is a stumbling block in the creation of separate state,” he said.
Congress MP Ponnam Prabhakar went a step ahead and called the Chief Minister a “liar.”
The Karimnagar MP was angry with Mr Reddy for allegedly sending reports to Centre toning down the impact of the general strike. Mr Madhu Yashki, the Nizamabad MP, threatened to “pull oxygen” rom both the Centre and state governments if they went back on the creation of Telangana state.
In an unprecedented manner, the T employees forced the transport department senior officials to withdraw the showcause notices issued against the striking staff. In the process, they abused commissioner Hiralal Samaria and manhandled senior official P. Srinivas.
Similar was the situation at the office of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poor where the senior department officials were threatened with dire consequences if they did not withdraw the termination orders of the contract employees who were also on strike.
In another development, scores of T agitators led by Telangana Praja Front leader Vimala ransacked the office of the controversy-ridden Emaar Properties. They demanded that the company should quit the township and golf project and return the lands forcibly taken from the local farmers.
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