When Home Minister Amit Shah addresses the public meeting near the historic ‘Banyan Tree of 1,000 hangings’ ground near Nirmal, Adilabad, he will be the third Home Minister, continuing a tradition initiated by senior leader and another ex-Home Minister L.K. Advani.
It was in 1998 in the Nizam College Grounds that Mr. Advani took up the cause when he was the Home Minister and had demanded the State government celebrate the Telangana Liberation Day officially.
The tradition was later continued when the then Home Minister and now Defence Minister Rajnath Singh raised the issue yet another time in 2017 when he addressed a public meeting in Nizamabad held as part of an ongoing ‘bus yatra’ by the then State president and now national OBC morcha president K. Laxman.
The party is pulling no stops to make it a grand success with party president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar making it a point at every stage of his ongoing ‘Praja Sangrama Yatra’ to exhort the cadre about the importance of the public meeting in the context of the prevailing political scenario.
He has been having teleconference with leaders of Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Adilabad, Medak and Hyderabad from where people are expected to attend. Senior leaders including G. Narayan Reddy, NVSS Prabhakar, Mr. Rao and others have been touring villages in Nirmal constituency to urge people to attend and send a strong message to the government here.
Symbolic site
The meeting site is also symbolic as about 1,000 freedom fighters were said to have been hanged by Razakars during the erstwhile Nizam regime on the tree. Senior party leaders stated that Mr. Sanjay Kumar had personally requested the Home Minister to participate in his ongoing ‘padayatra’, which entered the 20th day, and then it was decided that Sept.17 will be ideal day.
“TRS chief and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao lashed out at the then governments for not celebrating the liberation day officially even in the Legislative Assembly, but kept silent on coming to power to please the Majlis party. We will definitely highlight this issue apart from taking the Government to task for its lacklustre performance,” they said.
Apart from Mr. Shah and Mr. Sanjay Kumar, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism G. Kishan Reddy, party MP Soyam Babu Rao will be among those present as also national general secretary Tarun Chugh, P Muralidhar Rao, Raja Singh, P. Sudhakar Reddy, etc.
