The Hindu : Front Page : TRS plan to storm Secretariat flops

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 03, 2007
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TRS plan to storm Secretariat flops

Special Correspondent

Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

Damp squib: T.Harish Rao, TRS legislator, being taken into preventive custody at Indira Park in Hyderabad on Monday.

HYDERABAD: Hundreds of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) activists were arrested by police when they made an unsuccessful bid to lay siege to the Secretariat to highlight their grievance that Government was not serious in repatriating non-local employees from Telangana in tune with GO 610.

Police threw an impenetrable security cordon around the Secretariat and rounded up TRS activists near the Indira Park from where they planned to march in large numbers to the seat of power.

Those who managed to sneak in through the security cordon outside the Secretariat via Lumbini Park across the road in the guise of visitors purchasing entry tickets were also picked up. Some others who landed up on the road in the guise of regular bus passengers were also whisked away. The main action was, however, reserved at Indira Park where hundreds of activists gathered. The police strategically closed in on them before they could move forward. They were bundled into waiting vans and shifted to different police establishments in the city. Some of them offered stiff resistance but were soon overpowered.

Water cannons

The police took no chances in making security arrangements for the demonstration for which they had denied permission on Sunday itself. A large police force with horses, water cannons and coils of barbed wire was positioned near the Secretariat and the Indira Park well ahead of the scheduled march by TRS activists.

TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao did not attend the programme. All other party MPs and loyal MLAs courted arrest. Rebel TRS leader A. Narendra later said, Mr. Rao owed an explanation about his absence.

He also said his own outfit would stage demonstrations on the same issue in all district headquarter towns on July 6.

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