The Samaikyandhra agitation hit a feverish pitch after it entered its third week on Wednesday and acquired momentum with leaders from Opposition parties backing the agitation.
The movement in all 13 districts of Andhra and Rayalaseema regions began on a tardy note with none of the political leaders coming forward to take the lead, but within a couple of days, people from all walks of life voluntarily found innovative ways to express their wrath and ire at the Congress Working Committee’s decision to carve out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh.
Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Officers joining the struggle for United Andhra Pradesh opened flood gates for different kinds of agitations and people came out in large numbers from Tuesday to give full support to the NGOs.
Many industrialists and other professional have started their own way of campaign against division of the State and if at all divided, they are resorting to SMS and e-mail campaigns to put pressure on the Congress party and Central government to impress upon them to make Hyderabad the common capital permanently.
Concerns of the farming community, the most influential in the region’s economy, with regard to sharing of irrigation waters, is uppermost in the minds of people here.
While Telangana Rashtra Samiti leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao has been the target of the people in general for his remarks on sending back people hailing from Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, the movement for Samaikyandhra is being sustained by people who are voluntarily closing their business establishments, banks and all educational institutions across Central Coastal Andhra Pradesh.
While it begun as a violent agitation in Chittoor, Anantapur and Kadapa districts, in Prakasam, Guntur, Krishna and West Godavari, the agitating crowd did not damage public property and APSRTC buses were confined to bus depots. While several second-rung leaders in the Congress party have been leading the Samaikyandhra agitation in Guntur and Krishna districts, the Telugu Desam and YSRC leaders are holding ‘Vanta Vaarpu’, rasta roko and other agitations. A peculiar trend this time is the continuation of the agitation for more than 15 days with the youth taking the lead.
