Ahead of the bandh call given by Opposition parties on Saturday, the Congress, Telugu Desam and Bharatiya Janata Party organised different programmes on Friday to showcase the plight of farmers - what they termed ‘resultant of an uncaring Telangana Rashtra Samithi Government'.
The day saw Congress leaders Danam Nagender, M. Anjan Kumar Yadav, his son Anil Kumar and others being arrested as they tried to take out a rally from Charminar to Secunderabad. They were then taken to Kanchanbagh police station and later released.
Near the Ranga Reddy Collectorate, TDP and BJP leaders shouted slogans and disrupted traffic for a while. They submitted a memorandum to District Collector M. Raghunandan Rao, listing out their demands including a one-time settlement of the second and final instalment of the loan waiver of farm loans upto Rs.1 lakh.
Those who met the Collector included TDP MP Garikapati Mohan Rao, TDP MLAs Errabelli Dayakar Rao, Prakash Goud, K.P. Vivekanand, A. Gandhi and TDP leader L. Ramana, apart from BJP MLAs K. Laxman and Chintala Ramachandra Reddy.
Earlier, at around noon, leaders of the BJP including Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation unit B. Venkat Reddy, former Deputy Mayor of Hyderabad Rajkumar and senior party leader Baddam Bal Reddy spoke at a press conference, lashing out at the ‘callous Government’ and reiterating their demand for an announcement from Government about the loan waiver.
Because Mr. Danam Nagender had by then been arrested, the organisers got him to talk over a mobile, putting him on speaker mode. The leaders at the press conference regretted that after they faced injustice for decades from previous Governments, they were not getting any succour, even after a Telangana Government was in place.
The problems relating to minimum support price, grossly-inadequate supply of quality seed and fertiliser, was leading to an average of five or six farmers taking the extreme step and committing suicide every day, they said, pointing out that since the Telangana Rashtra Samithi Government had taken over on June 2 last year, an estimated 1,500 farmers had committed suicide.
