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Telangana police detained key opposition leaders from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and Telangana Rakshana Sena (TRS) in separate incidents on July 2.
TRS leaders were detained at a protest demanding land rights for activists of the Telangana movement. BRS leaders were detained on route to a debate with Congress leaders regarding the state’s debt and alleged irregularities tenders
BRS leaders T Harish Rao, V Srinivas Goud, and RS Praveen Kumar were detained by Hyderabad police outside Telangana Bhavan while attempting to march to the Telangana Martyrs’ Memorial (Gun Park) to participate in the debate.
In a separate incident, Telangana Rakshana Sena (TRS) founder-president Kalvakuntla Kavitha was detained in Boduppal.
TRS detentions at protest
Kavitha was leading a day-long agitation demanding that the Congress government fulfil its promise of allotting 250-square-yard house plots to Telangana movement activists.
Ahead of the protest, police carried out preventive detentions of TRS leaders and activists across the state and dismantled tents erected at the protest site in the Nacharam Industrial Area.
Kavitha reached the venue, named ‘Telangana Udyama Karula Rakshana Colony’, where she participated in a pooja after installing the foundation stone.
Police later attempted to disperse the gathering, triggering a scuffle between protesters and them.
Kavitha, along with hundreds of Telangana Rakshana Sena leaders, activists and Telangana movement participants, was detained and shifted to the Bollarum police station.
Speaking to the media after her detention, Kavitha alleged that police had resorted to an indiscriminate lathi-charge on women and activists.
“We are only demanding that the Congress government honour its promise to Telangana movement activists. The countdown for the Congress government has begun,” she said, adding that the agitation would continue until the promises were fulfilled.
Following her detention, TRS leaders and activists staged a sit-in outside the Bollarum police station, demanding her immediate release and raising slogans against the Congress government.
Meanwhile, Harish Rao accused the Congress government of using the police to prevent the BRS from participating in a debate that Congress ministers had proposed.
The row followed days of public exchanges between Congress ministers and BRS working president KT Rama Rao and senior leader Harish Rao over Telangana’s debt burden and alleged irregularities in residential school tenders.
BRS leaders said at a press meet that they were carrying documentary evidence to substantiate their allegations of irregularities in residential Gurukul school tenders.
“We were going only for a debate, not for a fight. We are ready to present all the evidence even now. If the ministers had challenged us, why are the police stopping and arresting us?” Harish Rao asked.
He also alleged that police prevented him from speaking to Minister Ponnam Prabhakar.
Earlier in the day, KT Rama Rao and Harish Rao arrived at Telangana Bhavan along with other BRS leaders. While Rama Rao remained at the party headquarters awaiting a debate with Minister Jupally Krishna Rao on the state’s debt, Harish Rao, accompanied by senior leaders including RS Praveen Kumar, attempted to proceed to Gun Park, where they were detained outside Telangana Bhavan.
This story was written by a student interning with TNM.