Waving saffron flags and renting religious slogans at the top of their lungs, thousands of youngsters took out Hanuman Jayanti processions in the city under the aegis of different right wing organisations on Tuesday.
The main Shobha Yatra started from Gowliguda Ram Mandir around noon on a massive note but culminated in a meeting at Imperial Garden of Sikh Village with a modest gathering. Similar minor rallies were taken out in various parts of city till late in the night.
Though all processions passed off peacefully, police were on tenterhooks all the time as they wanted to ensure procession participants didn’t create problems by any acts of provocation while returning home. The pressure was mostly on Hyderabad police since the main ‘Shobha Yatra’ passed through the central part of the city. However, their counterparts of Rachakonda and Cyberabad too had their share of challenges as scores of such processions were witnessed in their respective areas as well.
Tiff with police
Everything didn’t go on smoothly either. Even before the rally began from Gowliguda Ram Mandir, activists of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad had a tiff with the police as the latter dissuaded them from using high decibel music system.
What started as an argument soon turned into heated exchanges. Objecting to restrictions by police over using DJ systems, the procession participants squatted at the temple. Eventually both came to an understanding and the procession began.
Before that, another Shobha Yatra from Hanuman temple of Karmanghat began. After passing through surrounding areas, it entered Saroornagar and joined the main procession at Putlibowli.
Video surveillance
For Hyderabad police, which successfully set up high definition surveillance cameras on majority of trunk routes, video surveillance of important events has become a norm now. The entire Shobha Yatra route already had permanently fixed HD cameras through community CCTV project.
This time, the police made one more significant improvement of giving the live video footage connection to the Chief Minister’s camp-office-cum-residence (Pragathi Bhavan). Similar connection was already given to the DGP office.
Hyderabad Police Commissioner M. Mahender Reddy, accompanied by officials of different civic departments, personally monitored progress of the procession.