Hyderabad shut down as thousands attend march

Agencies/Hyderabad

People look on as an Outside Broadcasting (OB) vehicle is engulfed in flames after it was set alight during a protest rally in Hyderabad yesterday

Businesses were shut in Hyderabad, the capital of the southern state and where global firms including Microsoft and Google have their main India offices, as thousands of protesters, including lawmakers, students and local government officials, took to the streets.

The four-decade-old demand for Telengana state to be carved out of the economically less developed part of Andhra Pradesh gathered momentum last year after the federal government, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party, accepted it in principle.

But the decision triggered a backlash from those opposed to breaking up Andhra Pradesh, a politically important state which sends the highest number of lawmakers from southern India to the federal parliament, forcing the ruling Congress-led coalition to backtrack.

Yesterday, supporters of creating Telengana took to the streets in a show of force. A few protesters shouting slogans broke through barricades set up around Hyderabad, prompting police to fire tear gas.

“This march is a warning to the government that people of Telengana will settle for nothing less than a separate state. Arrests and bans can’t deter us,” said Lakshma Reddy, a student taking part in the march.

It is being seen as a major victory for the Telangana movement as people from different walks of life voluntarily gathered for the march planned on the lines of pro-democracy protests in Egypt.

The protesters, who uprooted barricades, outnumbered the police and succeeded in holding the march despite the police sealing all the routes leading to the road and arresting thousands of people across Telangana region to prevent them from reaching Hyderabad.

Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) convener M Kodandaram, along with other leaders, was arrested by the police.

Congress MPs K Keshava Rao and Madhu Yashki faced the ire of protesters, who threw water bottles and other missiles demanding they resign. Both leaders were forced to leave the venue.

“The future of coming generations is more important for me than my examination,” said a student who took part in the march immediately after writing Class 11 exams.

Meanwhile, students from various organisations across the country will march to parliament today, demanding that a bill for the formation of Telangana state be introduced in the ongoing session.

Students under the banner of Students’ Solidarity Committee for Separate Telangana will march from Mandi House to Parliament House at 11am and later hold a protest meeting at Parliament Street.

Organisations like the All India Backward Students’ Front (AIBSF), the All India Students’ Association (AISA), the Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), the JNU Forum for Telangana, the Manipur Students’ Association Delhi (MSAD) and the Students’ Islamic Organisation (SIO) have extended their support to the march.

The campaign for Telengana has split the Congress with 11 of the party’s 33 lawmakers from Andhra Pradesh threatening to resign if the government didn’t agree to the new state by the end of the year.

Singh’s coalition, already under pressure from allies over a raft of corruption scandals, has a wafer-thin majority in parliament and loss of support will force it to look for new allies, making it vulnerable to pressure from these parties.

Supporters for Telengana state say that a large part of the north and western parts of Andhra Pradesh have been neglected by successive governments and trail other regions in economic development.

India has 28 states and the last time new states were created was around the turn of the century. Besides Telengana, there are demands for new states in western and eastern India.