Exerting fresh pressure on the UPA Government, Telangana activists on Sunday launched a novel protest by organising collective cooking programmes at key traffic junctions here and threatened to intensify their agitation if their demand is not met.
TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao said the Centre should not “test the patience” of Telangana people on the statehood issue and asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take a decision without delay.
“I appeal to the Prime Minister sincerely, don’t trouble Telangana people by delaying (a decision). You should implement the promise you made in Parliament. You should start the official process for formation of Telangana immediately.
“If you delay, Telangana people are ready to agitate in a big way. There will be a possibility of unnatural developments taking place. Because, there is a limit to patience,” he said.
In their ‘Hyderabad Cooks On Roads’ protest, activists of TRS and members of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) cooked food on streets at various important traffic junctions here.
“It is a practice to conduct collective cooking and community lunches in open areas in Telangana during the monsoon. We have converted this into a form of protest to express our demand for separate statehood,” Telangana JAC Convener M Kodandaram told reporters at the Gun Park in front of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly building here.
The TRS chief participated in one such protest near his house in Banjara hills and also at the Gun Park. His son and MLA K T Rama Rao attended the programme at Ameerpet while his cousin and MLA T Harish Rao also took part in the protest.
Significantly, Congress MLA from Jubilee Hills Vishnuvardhan Reddy attended the programme in the city.
BJP leaders Bandaru Dattatreya and Vidyasagar Rao joined the protest at Basheerbagh and other places.
