Hyderabad police on Tuesday took into preventive custody BJP leaders, who took out a march to Pragathi Bhavan to meet with the Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. The leaders wished to submit a memorandum of protest to the Chief Minister about the ban on Swami Paripoornanda from entering Hyderabad city limits for six months.
The leaders wanted to assemble at the party office in the Assembly premises and from thereon proceed towards Somajiguda. The police who were aware of the protest took into custody several leaders, including elected representatives as their rally did not have police permission.
K Laxman, the BJP state unit President was picked up from the Old MLA quarters and G Kishan Reddy from the Police Commissioner’s Office. Ramachandra Rao and Raja Singh were kept under house arrest. NVSS Prabhakar was restricted to his Uppal constituency.
“The tyrannical and dictatorial mindset of KCR is causing huge damage to the democratic fabric of our State. As head of the government, the Chief Minister of this state is duty bound to meet MLAs and MLCs. Instead, the Chief Minister here is ordering arrests of MLAs, making a mockery of democracy,” alleged G Kishan Reddy to Deccan Chronicle after his release.
He also said that BJP legislators had requested for an appointment with the Chief Minister to discuss the ban on Swami Paripoornanda but were arrested instead.
Swami Paripoornanada was externed from Hyderabad on July 11, he was later sent show-cause notices about his externment from Cyberabad and Rachakonda police limits recently. He had planned to stage a protest against the remarks made by Kathi Mahesh, a film critic against a Hindu deity.
The protests by BJP leaders comes after the party’s national president Amit Shah’s recent visit to Hyderabad on July 13. During his one-day visit, he had reportedly tasked the state unit to start preparing for the general elections in 2019.