This is perhaps the first time that tractors are being used in large numbers to transport crowds for a political meeting.
In the wake of TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s decision to showcase agriculture as the government’s main development agenda, party leaders have deployed hundreds of tractors for the meeting on Thursday. The tractor owner, driver and some other farmers make up each vehicle. “We were not hired ... we came voluntarily. Only fuel was provided by our leaders,” one farmer said.
Driving a tractor all the way from Wanaparthy was Planning Board Vice-Chairman S. Niranjan Reddy. who is making it a second time. For the foundation day meeting at Warangal in 2003, he had pedalled 400 kms along with hundreds of other cyclists over six days to stoke public sympathy on need for separate Telangana.
Mr. Reddy had collected Krishna water at the entry point of the river at Thangedi near Makthal in Mahbubnagar district and started the cycle yatra from Kollapur on April 22, 2003. He handed over the vessel containing water to KCR in the presence of then Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The mission was aimed to highlight that Krishna water was never put to use in Mahbubnagar and that justice would be done only in Telangana State.
